Quicksilver's Catch

“You’re welcome,” he said with undisguised sarcasm. “Always glad to help a lady in distress.”

What did he think she was, an ungrateful, illmannered boor? She was a lady, after all. That was practically her sole credential. And as for distress, well, she’d gotten along just fine for the past two days, despite the fact that she was being hunted like a dog. And, like a dog, Amanda could feel her lips pulling back in a snarl when she said, “I’m most appreciative of your chivalry, sir. Keep the change, won’t you?”

“Keep the—?”

Marcus dragged in a calming breath as he looked down at the four silver dollars in the palm of his hand. He’d just sprinted a quarter mile to catch a nine-year-old thief, caught the boy by the scruff of the neck, upended him and shaken the two double eagles loose.

“Don’t you ever steal from somebody who trusts you,” Marcus had warned him. “Especially a lady who’s scared and in trouble and is depending on you for help. You got that, kid?”

After nodding and blubbering about how sorry he was, the little bastard had proved just how much the advice meant to him by kicking Marcus in the shin and hightailing it into a grove of elm trees.

And now here he was—Marcus Quicksilver, knight errant, slayer of dragons and shoeshine boys, humble ticket bearer—being told by his damsel in distress to keep the goddamn change!

He was tempted to swipe the railroad ticket right out of her dainty little hand and tell her to walk wherever it was she was headed and good luck to anybody she met along the way. Instead, he reached out for her hand, turned it over and slapped the four coins into the palm of her glove. Hard.

“My pleasure, miss,” he said through clenched teeth. “Enjoy your trip.” And here’s hoping I get hit by lightning before I ever set eyes on you again.

Marcus was still muttering to himself half an hour later as he settled into his seat in the crowded railroad car. He’d had the devil’s own time getting his horse, a chestnut mare he’d christened Sarah B., up the ramp of the baggage car and into her narrow stall. Like her dramatically famous namesake, Sarah Bernhardt, the horse was temperamental. She rarely acted up when the two of them were alone on the trail, but seemed to prefer an audience, usually one of chortling, tobacco-chawing geezers who took great delight and purely perverse pleasure in Marcus’s predicament.

He sat now with his saddlebags on the empty seat beside him, his arms crossed over his chest and his legs stretched out, anticipating a halfway-decent nap once the train got under way and its rocking motion began. It ought to be fairly quiet until the train pulled into the next meal stop, in Julesburg. He listened to the big locomotive building up its head of steam, felt the floor beneath his boots begin to tremble, then heard the conductor bawl out, “All aboard!” Marcus let his eyes drift closed.

With a little luck and a little nap, he hoped his foul temper would dissipate. Maybe his luck would change, too. He hadn’t been lucky of late. Not a bit Now he was just about broke. Again.

Not that it mattered all that much, Marcus thought wearily. A lifetime ago, when he became a bounty hunter, more out of necessity than by choice, his plan had been to collect enough bounties until he had the cash to buy a decent piece of land and try his hand at farming again. Even try his luck at marriage one more time.

He was no closer to that dream today than he’d been a decade ago, and it made him wonder—when he allowed himself to think about the pain of the past and the blank slate of the future—if maybe he really didn’t want that dream to come true.

Hell. Maybe a man was only meant to be lucky once in a lifetime, and his all-too-brief marriage to Sarabeth had been his own brief portion of good luck.

He sighed roughly, shrugging off the haunting memories, settling deeper into the upholstery. Even more than good luck now, he needed the healing power of a good, long sleep.

“Excuse me.” Someone jabbed his shoulder. “I said excuse me, sir. Would you be good enough to remove your belongings from this seat?”

Marcus didn’t even have to look up. That haughty voice was almost as familiar to him as his own now. Her face, as well. Those money-green eyes would be narrowed on him, cool and demanding, and her luscious mouth would be thin with impatience. He hesitated a moment, as if he hadn’t heard her, before he reached over to grab hold of his saddlebags and shove them under his seat.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” Marcus angled his hat over his eyes once more and crossed his arms, more determined than ever to fall asleep, despite—or maybe because of—the feverish activity in the adjacent seat.

She sat. She sighed. She got up. She muttered under her breath and then she stepped on Marcus’s foot.

“Sorry.”

“It’s all right,” he grunted, his eyes still closed.

“I can’t seem to get this hatbox properly situated up here.”

He’d just about talked himself out of the chivalry business entirely when the train lurched forward and the damsel and her hatbox both wound up in his lap. It nearly knocked the breath out of him, but Marcus knew it wasn’t the fall so much as the feel of her that made his chest seize up.

Suddenly he was caught up in complicated silken curves and corn-silk hair. He remembered now asking to be hit by lightning, and he was fairly certain that his wish had just been granted. When he swore, it came out as a beleaguered sigh.

“Hold still,” he told her as she wriggled on his lap.

Somehow a strand of her blond hair had gotten wound around his shirt button, and the more she squirmed, the worse it got.

“I’m caught!” she squealed.

“Hang on a minute.” He tried to unwind the silky lock of hair.

“Ouch!”

“Hold still, dammit.”

“Ouch!”

“Aw, hell.” Marcus ripped the button from his shirt. “There. You’re free.”

She scrambled off his lap and managed to step on both his feet before retaking her seat. Once there, she fussed with her curls and her clothes, paying no attention to Marcus and blithely ignoring the hatbox, which was still on his lap.

He counted to ten. Slowly. Practicing the patience of a saint. Nine saints. Ten. He sighed. “Your hatbox, miss.”

And just as Marcus had known she would, she looked at him with her rich green eyes, flicked him a small but still imperious smile, and suggested he stash the hat box in the rack overhead.

“By all means, Duchess,” he muttered under his breath as he got up to cram the box into the wire rack. He half expected her to hand him a nickel when he sat back down, but she didn’t. His imperious duchess—the little brat—was already fast asleep.

“Sleep tight, Your Ladyship,” he whispered, knowing his own hopes for a nap had been blasted to smithereens by the mere fact of her presence.

Chapter Two

Her Ladyship slept through two scheduled stops to take on water and one abrupt, unscheduled stop when a herd of southbound buffalo took a full five minutes to cross the Union Pacific tracks. She slept with the faith and innocence of a child, even during the commotion when all the passengers shifted from window to window to watch the passing herd. All the passengers except Marcus—former knight errant—whose sole function at the moment seemed to be in serving Her Ladyship as a pillow.

He didn’t mind so much. God, she was pretty. Not that he put a woman’s looks above other qualities. He didn’t. Sarabeth hadn’t been a beauty, by any means, but Marcus had loved her sweet disposition and her sprightly wit and—most of all—her ability to turn any grief or sadness into sunshine. This woman appeared to have the disposition of a shecat, but she was still a pure pleasure to look at. Marcus liked the warmth of her as she leaned against his shoulder, the feel of her soft hair just brushing his cheek and the occasional riffle of her breath on his jaw. He didn’t mind so much being used as a pillow.

What he minded, though, was that when the train finally stopped in Julesburg, Her Ladyship awoke all smiling and refreshed, while he felt like and most probably looked like a rumpled bed. A bed that suddenly remembered that its headboard ached like hell.

She sat up and stretched like a dainty cat, then smiled and exclaimed with innocent surprise, “Oh, I must’ve dozed off.”

“For a minute or two,” Marcus said, rolling his neck and his left shoulder to loosen the kinks and get the circulation going again.

She leaned across him then to look out the window, apparently unaware that her elbow was digging into his thigh or that her breast was snug against his upper arm.

“This must be Julesburg,” she said, gazing this way and that out the window. “What an interestinglooking little town.”

Julesburg? It was a patched-together, put-upovernight railroad town, half clapboard and half canvas, all of it baking in the afternoon sun. Marcus might have called it peculiar at best or downright ugly at worst, but certainly not interesting.

“I guess that depends on where you’re from,” he murmured.

“Do you suppose there’s a dry goods store here?” she asked, still squinting out the window.

“Probably. Yeah. Sure. I suspect there’d be a mercantile wedged in somewhere between all those saloons and dance halls.”

“Good.” She levered off his leg and gave her curls a little toss. “I need to purchase a few items. Tell the conductor I’ll be back shortly, will you? Oh, never mind. I see him up there. I’ll tell him myself.”

“This is a meal stop,” Marcus said. That meant the passengers were going to be given maybe twenty or thirty minutes to wolf down a tough antelope steak and some soggy griddle cakes before the train pulled out again. There was barely enough time to eat, much less locate a privy or do any shopping.

She smiled at him sunnily. She spoke with cheerful dismissiveness. “Yes. Well, enjoy your meal.” Then she made her way along the aisle, gave the same smile to the conductor and told him to hold the train for her.

Hold the goddamn train for her! Marcus could hardly believe his ears. And the poor, slack-jawed conductor was still scratching his head, Marcus noticed, when the duchess descended from the car and whisked purposefully past the depot and the dining hall on her way into town.

When she traveled west the first time, to join Angus McCray in Denver a mere two weeks ago, it had been in a private railroad car that her fiancé had procured for her trip. The accommodations had been luxurious, quite what she’d always been accustomed to, but Amanda hadn’t seen much of the country through the heavily draped windows of that train. Once again, she had found herself walled off from the real world. It was a shame, really. There was so much to see. Even this half-built town of Julesburg struck her as interesting.

For all her wealth, she thought, she’d actually experienced very little—next to nothing, really—in the twenty-one years she’d lived under her grandmother’s stern gaze and firm thumb. Running away to marry Angus was the only way Amanda knew to escape that silk imprisonment and to remedy her inexperience. And she was still bound and determined to do it. In fact, she was more determined than ever, now that she realized how set Honoria Grenville was on keeping her in her gilded little cage and the lengths to which her grandmother would go to achieve her ends.

“Over my dead body, Grandmother,” Amanda muttered as she walked into the little mercantile on Julesburg’s only street. She called a cheerful goodafternoon to the young female clerk behind the counter, but the girl didn’t seem particularly enthusiastic when she merely nodded back.

It was probably her appearance, Amanda thought as she caught a glimpse of herself in a cracked mirror hanging from a nail near the door. Good heavens! Her hair was frightful, and nearly two shades darker than normal from all the dust and cinders on the train. She peered closer into the glass and wiped a smudge from her chin with a dirty kid glove.

It had been two—no, three—days now since she had a proper bath. By the time she got to Denver, Angus would probably find her, well…pungent, to say the very least.

She lifted a vaguely familiar bottle from a nearby shelf and squinted to read the small print on the label. What she had assumed was lavender toilet water turned out to be a tonic for assorted female complaints, but since being dirty and smelling bad was not among them, she put the bottle back on the shelf, easily returning it to the exact spot, because there was a perfect, dustless circle to mark the place. Amanda frowned and found herself wondering all of a sudden what in the world the stranger on the train had thought of his sooty traveling companion or how he’d even been able to sit next to her, when she must reek to high heaven.

Not that it made any difference, but a little part of her wished she looked a bit more appealing to the handsome man with the deep blue, nearly indigo eyes. She told herself she was being vain and silly, and that if she thought dreamily of anyone’s eyes at all, it ought to be those of her fiancé. Angus had lovely eyes. They were… What the devil were they? Brown? Green? A muddled shade somewhere in between?

“I was looking for some eau de cologne, miss,” she called out to the salesgirl, who was now leaning both elbows on the counter and gazing out the window instead of being of any assistance. It was far from the behavior Amanda was accustomed to from fawning clerks in fashionable shops in New York, who always seemed to know what she wanted before she herself did, obsequious people who did her grandmother’s bidding. She’d always detested all that flattery and fuss, but right now she had to admit she wouldn’t mind having a bit of it, if it meant finding what she wanted.

“I can’t seem to locate any perfumes or eaux de cologne on these shelves,” she said, trying to sound a little less helpless than she felt, attempting not to sneeze at the dust she had disturbed in her search.

“Oh de what?”

“Eau de cologne,” Amanda repeated, but when she received only a blank look in return, she added, “Toilet water. Any fragrance will do.”

The girl, whose face was as pale and as flat as the moon, continued to stare at Amanda. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

Amanda shook her head, attempting to reassure herself that the question was simply a friendly one, born of natural curiosity rather than dark suspicion. After all, not everyone in Nebraska would have seen those posters, and half the people who might have seen them probably couldn’t read. She hoped.

“So where’re you from?” the girl asked.

“Back east,” Amanda answered nonchalantly as she continued to peruse the shelves.

“Whereabouts?”

“Such curiosity.” Amanda laughed nervously now, picking up another bottle from the shelf. “Just east,” she said, instead of the more truthful I’m that runaway heiress from New York you’ve certainly read about. The one with five thousand dollars on her head. The one who hasn’t washed her hair or had a bath in days and whom you can probably smell all the way across the store. That one.

“We don’t have any,” the girl said.

“Pardon me?”

“I said we don’t have any of that oh de stuff they sell in the East. There’s a bottle of vanilla extract over there by the pickles.” She pointed. “Smells ever so good when you dab it on. Will that do you?”

Breathing a little sigh of relief, Amanda walked to the pickle barrel and picked up the small brown bottle of vanilla. Her hand was shaking. “This will do nicely,” she said, trying to hide the tremors from the salesgirl as she fumbled in her handbag, found a gold coin and handed it over the counter.

Just as the girl dropped the coin in a metal cash box, the blast of a whistle shook the dry goods store and rattled the glass in the windows, as well as all the bottles on the shelves.

“Train’s leaving,” the girl said casually while counting out Amanda’s change. “How long you staying in town?”

“What? Oh, no. I’m not staying,” Amanda replied, with some amazement, and a touch of amusement that she hoped wouldn’t hurt the clerk’s feelings. It was one thing to do a bit of necessary shopping in a town like this, but the very idea that she would actually stay here was, well…absurd.

The girl, however, didn’t seem to think it was so absurd. She was smiling now, angling her head toward a window in the back of the store. “Oh, yes, you are staying,” she said, just as the big black Union Pacific locomotive steamed past.

The smile on the clerk’s flat face widened, then twisted into what Amanda might almost have called a sneer when the girl added, “You need to buy anything else—toothbrush, toothpaste, a cake of soapto see you through till the next train comes?”

Outside the depot, Marcus leaned against a roof post and scraped a match on the sole of his boot. He’d declined the antelope steak and the griddle cakes, but accepted a cigar from a fellow passenger as they both stood contemplating the Wanted posters tacked up just inside the dining hall. Marcus had pointedly avoided looking at the posters in North Platte, hoping to forget for a while that he was a bounty hunter who’d just lost his last bounty to a hangman’s noose..

“Take a look at that one,” the cigar-smoking fellow had said, pointing to a fresh sheet of paper near the bottom of the array of torn and flyspecked notices. “Now that would be some catch, wouldn’t it?”

Marcus had been reading the Wanted poster for a bank robber named Ed Caragher, alias Chick McGee, alias Robert LePage, and wondering how the culprit kept his monickers straight when his gaze drifted to where the man was pointing. Reward, it said, in bold black print, and just beneath that Runaway Heiress. Of course, as soon as Marcus read the description—blond hair, green eyes, small stature, delicate build—he knew exactly who his damsel in distress was. Some catch, indeed.

He’d done his damnedest then to hide the predatory smile tugging at his mouth. “She’s a hundred miles from here, if she cut loose from the old lady three days ago,” he told the man beside him. “Probably already in Denver by now, if that’s where she was headed.”

The man had sighed, and Marcus had echoed it. A five-thousand-dollar sigh.

“I sure could’ve used that reward the old Grenville woman’s offering.” The man had lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Oh, well. I expect you’re right about that girl not being anywhere near here. Enjoy that cigar. Nice talking to you.” He’d shrugged again and began to walk away.

“Thanks. You too. And you know what they say,” Marcus had called after him. “Easy come. Easy go.”

They also said something about a bird in the hand, Marcus thought as he glanced around to make sure no one was watching when he surreptitiously took the poster from the wall, folded it and stashed it in his pocket.

That explained the duchess’s imperious behavior, especially her blithe request that the conductor hold the train. Amanda Grenville, described in the poster as the sole heiress to the Grenville Ironworks, was used to riding in private railroad cars that did indeed come or go at her command. Marcus was sure it hadn’t even occurred to her that the train wouldn’t wait. After all, time and tide and probably even the Almighty tended to stand still for the obscenely rich.

But little Miss Amanda Grenville was way out of her element now, no longer in that ethereal place where beautiful, spoiled goddesses snapped their dainty fingers to halt trains. Little Amanda was without a clue as to how the real world worked. She needed help even more than she knew. Poor little, rich little Amanda.

Marcus smiled. A slow, smooth, self-congratulatory smile. Poor little Amanda was in dire need of a knight in shining armor, and he—Marcus Quicksilver, hero, helper, honest, brave and true—was more than ready to fill that particular bill.

There had been a stampede of diners when the conductor called, “All aboard,” but there had been no one rushing from the opposite direction of the town, no breathless heiress hurrying to catch the train, so Marcus had hastily retrieved the hatbox and his saddlebags, and then he had led Sarah B. from her stall in the baggage car. The mare had been so happy to leave the train that she was as docile as a kitten, and she stood at a nearby hitching rail now, placidly whisking her tail at flies.

Marcus felt almost placid himself as he leaned against the post and lit his cigar. Five thousand dollars! The biggest bounty he’d ever brought in had been six years ago, when he captured Herman Culley, a murderer with two thousand dollars on his head. The local authorities in Texas had wanted him dead or alive, but when Marcus obliged them—not to mention spared them the time and expense of a trial—by bringing Culley in draped over his saddle, the politicos had reneged on the two thousand and only paid him fifteen hundred.

Five thousand dollars. There’d be no reneging with old lady Grenville, Marcus was certain. Five thousand was a drop in the bucket to someone like her. And to him? To him it was perhaps the future that he’d spent the past decade avoiding. Five thousand could buy a lot of land. Good land. By God, maybe it was time.

Marcus blew a stream of cigar smoke off to his left and picked a fleck of tobacco from his lower lip. He was intensely aware of the folded poster in his pocket. It already felt like folded greenbacks, and he wondered if the Grenville woman would come across with cash or a check. Of course, he hadn’t done anything to earn it yet, he reminded himself. Fantasizing about the reward was one thing. Bringing Miss Amanda Grenville in was something else entirely.

He was glad now that she’d gotten off the train. That saved him forcing the decision upon her. The fewer people who saw her, the better, because it was as sure as sunrise that every manhunter west of the Mississippi had already dropped whatever he was doing and was hot on little Amanda’s trail. It was also likely that every amateur with a five-thousand-dollar dream was searching for her, too.

For a minute, Marcus seriously considered tying her up and nailing her in a crate neatly addressed to Granny Grenville. That would not only garner him the reward, but would also put an end to hatboxes, snagged buttons, sharp elbows and all the other irritations the lady just naturally provoked. But it would also mean the end of those glorious green eyes and that fetching little mouth and…

Well, hell. It just wouldn’t be sporting, Marcus told himself. Half the pleasure of being a bounty hunter was the chase, in his estimation. Most of the pleasure, if he was to be brutally honest. The money had never meant all that much to him.

What was even better, he thought now, as he watched little Miss Amanda Grenville come flying down the street in his direction, was having his quarry run right into his arms. Into his waiting, helpful arms. Marcus took a last pull from his cigar, then dropped it and ground it under his heel.

“The train left!” She skidded to a halt beside him, and hardly had enough breath to get the words out. Her pretty face was flushed and damp, but those green eyes were dry and hot.

“Right on time, too.” Marcus bit down on a grin as he shifted off the post and gestured toward the fabric-covered parcel not too distant from his feet. “There’s your hatbox, Duchess. Don’t bother to thank me.”

If she heard him, she didn’t react. Nor did she express a tad of gratitude. Not that Marcus expected a goddess to be grateful to a mortal. Her gaze moved frantically around the platform. She waved her hands wildly. “Where’s my valise?”

He shrugged.

“I need my valise!” she wailed, not so much to him as to the Fates in general. “All my clothes are in my valise. And my hairbrush, too. And…and…” Her foot shot out and sent the hatbox flying. “All my money’s in my suitcase, dammit. What am I supposed to do now?”

Then she paced back and forth for a minute like a tiny tornado on the platform, before she plopped down in a heap of skirts and started chewing on a nail, muttering to herself as if Marcus weren’t there.