Once it was gone, she motioned the big man away so that they were alone in the room. “Now, I want to know why you look at me with such hatred. You do not look at the men that way. Is it because I am a woman, and you do not approve of a woman who is so skilled as I am?”
“Skill? Is that what you call it?” Blair asked, flexing her sore jaw. “Just because men are such fools that they can’t see through a woman like you, doesn’t mean that I am. I know what you are.”
“I am so glad that you do, but then I don’t believe I have ever lied to anyone.”
“You can stop lying to me for one. I know all about you.” She Lifted her head somewhat and tried to muster what pride she could. “I am Leander’s wife.”
Blair had to admit that the woman was certainly a good actress. One after another, emotions passed across her face. They ranged from puzzlement to disbelief, and ended with humor.
The woman stood, her back to Blair. “Ah, Leander,” she said at last. “Dear Leander.”
“There’s no need to act so smug,” Blair shot at her. “You may think you have him and that he’ll always be yours, but I’ll make him forget everything that ever happened between the two of you.”
When the woman turned back to face Blair, her face was serious. “How could he forget what we had? No one alive could forget something like that. It happens only once in a lifetime. So, he has married you. How long ago?”
&n
bsp; “Two days. You should know, since he spent our wedding night with you. Tell me, how did you try to kill yourself? You look as if you’ve recovered well enough. Perhaps it was merely a play for sympathy and not a true attempt at suicide. I can’t imagine that you’d be a good loser when it came to someone like Leander.”
“No,” she said softly. “I didn’t want to lose Leander, but I didn’t want anyone else to have hum, either. Did he tell you why we are no longer together?”
“He didn’t tell me a word about you. After finding out what you’ve become, I’m sure he can barely stand to think of you. Reed told me. But perhaps you don’t know Lee’s father, since you’re not the sort of woman a man can bring home to his family. Lee thought you were dead, and he left Paris thinking you were dead. He returned to Chandler.” Blair thought of all the stories he’d told her about his years in Europe, and he’d never even hinted about another woman. But maybe it was too painful a subject for him to talk about.
“I’m going to win him,” Blair said. “He’s my husband, and neither you nor anyone else is going to take him from me. He’ll come for me and you may see him again, but you won’t have a chance with him.”
“Paris, was it?” the woman said, smiling. “Perhaps this Leander Taggert and I—.”
“Taggert? Leander’s no Taggert. Houston married Tag—.” She stopped. Something was wrong here, but she didn’t know what.
Françoise put her face close to Blair’s. “What is your name?”
“Dr. Blair Chandler Westfield,” she said, frowning.
Immediately, the woman turned on her heel and left the cabin.
Blair slumped back into the chair. She’d been here for nearly two days now, and she’d had very little sleep and even less food, and she was beginning to have trouble fully comprehending what was going on.
After they’d taken her, they’d blindfolded and gagged her and then ridden for what seemed like hours. Most of the time, she’d concentrated on keeping the hands of the cowboy who rode behind her in the saddle from running all over her body. He kept whispering that she “owed” him. For the life of her, Blair couldn’t remember having met the man before or having done anything to him.
She moved all over the horse, as far as she could, to get away from him, and when the horse began to grow restless and prance, one of the other men ordered the man in the saddle with her to leave her alone, saying that she belonged to Frankie.
That idea sent a shiver up Blair’s spine. Just who was Frankie and what did he want with her? She still had hopes that they needed her medical services but, because they hadn’t let her get her bag, she doubted it.
When they’d removed the blindfold, she was standing in front of a rundown little shack, a porch with a fallen post on one end. Around her were six men, all small and stupid-looking like the one who’d taken her. There was a small corral to her right, and a few other outbuildings here and there. And everything was surrounded by high, sheer cliff walls. White rock kept them protected—and hidden—like a fort. At the moment, Blair couldn’t even see the entryway into the canyon, but realized it must be small enough that the cabin could block it from view.
But she soon lost interest in her surroundings, because on the porch appeared Frankie, the Frenchwoman who was the love of her husband’s life. Hate, anger, and jealousy combined to make Blair speechless as she gaped up at this woman who was the leader of this two-bit band of semimorons.
Someone pushed Blair into the shack: a dirty, dark little place with two rooms, one with a table and a few broken chairs, the other with a bed. Supplies were on the floor in the main room.
For the first twenty-four hours, they’d been fairly lax in their guarding of Blair, but after four attempts to escape,—she’d almost succeeded in one of them—they’d tied her to the chair, and then ended by nailing it to the floor.
Now, her wrists were raw from the rough rope and from pulling on it for long hours, and Frankie had decided that perhaps a little less food would help her stay in place and keep her from again trying to scale the rock wall that protected them.
Blair wasn’t sure her mind was functioning properly. It seemed so long since she’d eaten or rested, and there was this horrid woman who was her husband’s lover. Part of her said that Leander had to be part of this, part of her said that Frankie had done it on her own, that she wanted to see Leander again. And if Lee saw her again, would he want Blair, or would he this time go with the woman whom Reed had called his one true love? Of course, Leander had left her on their wedding night to go to this woman. She had that kind of power over him. So who was to say that Leander wasn’t hiding behind the cabin somewhere, that he hadn’t arranged everything so that he and Frankie could be together?
There were tears running down Blair’s face when Frankie came into the room, with the cowboy who’d abducted Blair in tow by his ear, as if she were his schoolteacher. There were bright red handprints on the boy’s face where he’d been slapped.
“She is the one?” Frankie asked the boy. “You are the one who says he knows. Do you know or do you lie to me to settle an old debt?”