She stood on top of the building and watched Captain Montgomery looking for her. She had to put her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. She took a deep breath, put her arms out and her head back. It was the first time she’d enjoyed herself in months. How precious freedom is, she thought.
When she opened her eyes, Captain Montgomery was standing below and watching her.
“Oops,” she said, laughing, and ran to the far side of the building and started scrambling down a stack of barrels and old wagon wheels. Just as she reached the ground, Captain Montgomery was there. She started to run but he caught her skirt and pulled her to him.
She fought him. Oh, heavens, she fought him, but he kept her hands away from his face, and at last he grabbed her around the waist and slung her over his hip.
“You bite one part of me and you won’t be able to sit down for a week. You understand me?”
She felt rather like a sack of feed as she was slung across his arm, but she could tell he was very angry, and angry men sometimes did unpredictable things. So, instead of fighting him, she went limp so that he had her full weight tucked under his one arm. But it didn’t seem to make any difference to him as he stomped away from the town and into the woods with her.
At last, when they were some distance from the noisy town, he dumped her onto a soft, grassy bank.
“Captain Montgomery, I—”
“Don’t you say a word, not a word! I have been ordered to protect you and I damned well plan to do it. You may think your little escapade was clever, but you have no idea what’s going on. These are people you know nothing about. They—”
“You’re the one who knows nothing,” she said calmly, and lay back against the grass. The exercise in the clear, thin mountain air had made her feel wonderful. It was the first time since she’d heard Laurel was taken that she hadn’t felt as tense as a violin bow. “Oh, Captain, don’t you have any sense of humor? Any at all?” she said languidly. It was the first time in a long while that she’d noticed wildflowers and trees and blue sky high above her head.
He didn’t say anything for a while, and she didn’t look at him, but then he lay down on the grass about a foot away from her. “I have a rather well developed sense of humor, actually. But in the last year I seemed to have lost it.”
“Oh?” she said in an encouraging way, but he said nothing. She took a breath of the clear air. “I can’t imagine a man who names his horse Satan having a sense of humor. As far as I can tell, you are all business and no play. Your idea of dealing with women is to frighten them, to intimidate them. I’m sure some women like that, but you couldn’t have had much success.”
“You know nothing about me,” ’Ring said with some anger. “Nothing whatever.”
“Then I guess we’re even, for you know nothing about me.”
He turned on his elbow to look at her, but she kept looking skyward. “Now, there you’re wrong. The truth is, Miss LaReina, I know a great deal about you.”
She gave a derisive little chuckle. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
He rolled to his back. “Shall we make a wager?”
“More of your go-to-bed-with-me deals?” There was some bitterness in her voice.
“No,” he said softly. “We’ll wager for something more important.” He didn’t acknowledge the glare she sent his way. “For twenty-four hours you won’t run away. For twenty-four hours I can sleep knowing you won’t do anything foolish.”
“And you get to define foolish?”
“Yes.”
“What do I get?”
“For twenty-four hours I’ll stay away from you.”
She smiled up at the trees. “All this is to see whether you know anything about me or not, is it?” She didn’t think she was wagering much. First of all, she was supposed to meet someone about the letters that night right here in Denver City and she had no doubt she could do that under his nose. And second, from her observation, he was a man who couldn’t see beyond
the end of his own nose. He seemed to think women were frail creatures, and she knew he had preconceived ideas about opera singers. “All right, it’s a deal. What do you know about me?”
“First of all, if you’re a duchess, I’m Queen Victoria. You know almost nothing about aristocratic lineages, and you know nothing about Lanconia. And the brooch you, ah…lost, the one that belonged to your grandmother, very pretty little thing but neither the diamonds nor the pearls were quite the quality of a duchess. What you do know about is this country. You climb these hills like you were born and raised here. You can ride a horse better than most men, and you down a shot of rotgut whiskey as though you’ve done it many times before. How am I doing so far?”
“I haven’t fallen asleep yet.”
“Also you are at ease around Indians. Unusual in a European lady, don’t you think? You don’t know Sam or Frank very well and you don’t like Edith much. It makes me wonder if you were the one who chose them. Am I right?”
“Perhaps.”
“Let’s see, what else? My guess is that you’re a virgin, or very near to being one.”