Suddenly, a disturbing thought occurred to him. He didn’t know that was Lucy sharing his bedroll. Whoever had just given him that mighty nice French lesson had been little more than a mouth and a pair of hands. Soft hands, at that. Uncallused hands. The hands, say, of Lady Beechmuir or even that little Hindu, Ghote. Longarm’s eyes snapped wide open, and it was all he could do to keep from bolting upright with a shout. His pulse began to race even faster, but it wasn’t from lust or excitement now. It was pure-dee fear that made him practically lunge toward the other person in the blankets with him.
Relief flooded through him as he touched long, silky hair. His fingers tangled in it, and he practically hauled its owner up closer to his head. With a chuckle, Helene Booth molded her naked body against him and said in a husky whisper, “Really, Custis, you don’t have to be so rough. Unless, of course, that’s the way you like it …”
“Lady Beechmuir!” Longarm grated. The tide of relief that had washed through him began to ebb, only to be replaced with anger. “What the hell are you doing here?”
The fire had burned down almost to ashes, but it still cast enough light for him to be able to see her face as she smiled and licked her lips. “I should think that would be obvious,” she whispered. “Wouldn’t you? And please, you simply must start calling me Helene. Especially now that we’ve-“
“Don’t even say it!” Longarm hissed as he closed his eyes and grimaced.
“Why, Custis, you’re acting like you didn’t even know it was me who-” She stopped short, and her attractive features hardened in the dim light from the fire. “You didn’t know it was me, did you?” she accused. “You thought I was that little whore Lucy!”
Her voice was getting louder with anger, and Longarm shushed her as quietly as he could. He lifted his head and looked around, not seeing Ghote or Randall anywhere nearby. He had spread his bedroll right on the edge of the circle of firelight, thank goodness, and that circle had shrunk even more in the time he had been asleep. Whoever was on guard duty needed to feed some more wood to the fire and build up the flames … but not until Longarm got Lady Beechmuir back into her tent!
“You’d better go on back where you belong,” he told her quietly. “How’d you manage to sneak out of that tent without Lord Beechmuir knowing anyway?”
“Oh, John sleeps like a rock. Nothing ever disturbs him.” Helene frowned. “And it’s bloody well unfair for you to make me leave after what I did for you. The least you could do is return the favor.” The frown turned into a lascivious smile. “I’ll wager that mustache of yours tickles in the most delightful fashion.”
“You’ll never know,” growled Longarm. “Now get on back where you’re supposed to be, or I won’t have any choice but to raise a ruckus.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Helene gasped. “Why, you have more to lose by doing that than I do.”
“I don’t see how you figure that.” Longarm didn’t want this whispered conversation to continue, but short of physically booting her out of the bedroll, he didn’t know what he could do other than try to talk some sense into her.
“Even if John knew about the two of us, he wouldn’t do anything to me,” she said, her voice utterly confident. “He can’t afford to.”
Longarm shook his head. “Don’t reckon I follow you. Don’t they have divorce courts in England?”
“Certainly they do, but John would never divorce me. You see, Custis …” She traced a fingertip through the thick hair at the opening of his shirt. “John may have the noble title, but I have the money in the family. If he were to divorce me, who do you think would pay for those hunting expeditions all over the globe?”
Longarm took a deep breath. He understood a lot more now. Booth had married Helene for her money, and she had married him for his title. A fair arrangement all the way around, especially for folks who didn’t take their wedding vows any too seriously. But that didn’t mean Lord Beechmuir would continue to overlook his wife’s affairs if she started flaunting them in his face. Even if he couldn’t do anything about Helene’s wanton behavior, he might not look so kindly on her male partners. He might even reach for that Markham & Halliday elephant gun.
Longarm didn’t want any trouble like that, at least not until Mitch Rainey was either dead or behind bars again and the mystery of the Brazos Devil and Emmaline Thorp’s disappearance had been solved.
“I’m not going to argue with you,” he said sternly to Helene. “You go on back to your tent, and we won’t say any more about this.”
She stared at him in frustration and surprise. “You won’t do anything for me?”
“Damn it, I can’t! Or at least, I won’t. I’m no saint, but I’ve always figured there’s some things a fella just shouldn’t do.”
Helene glared at him. “You, sir, are a bounder!”
“Whatever you say, ma’am. Just get your noble little ass back where it belongs.”
“Oh!”
He looked around worriedly, sure that somebody must have heard her angry exclamation, but nobody seemed to be stirring around the campfire. Catamount Jack’s snores were as loud as ever, and the mound of buffalo robes near him that marked Lucy’s bedroll was still and silent except for the regular rise and fall of her breathing. Thorp looked like he was asleep too, and there was still no sign of Randall or Ghote. Longarm was beginning to worry about that. He should have seen at least one of the guards by now.
Of course, the fact that they weren’t around meant that Helene could get back in her tent unnoticed, if she ever left his bedroll. She was finally angry enough now to do that. She slipped out of the blankets and stood up, giving him a tantalizing glimpse of her nude body before she wrapped it in a blanket she must have brought with her. She glowered down at him for a second, then turned and stalked back toward the tent she was supposed to be sharing with her husband.
Longarm heaved a sigh of relief when she disappeared through the flap in the canvas. Maybe this little debacle wouldn’t cause any more trouble than it already had.
Despite his weariness, he knew he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep until he figured out where Ghote and Randall were. Now that he didn’t have to worry about Helene anymore, he realized that the whereabouts of the missing guards might be a much more important concern.
He tossed his blankets aside, climbed to his feet, and buttoned up his underwear and trousers. He picked up his Winchester and started circling the camp, moving as silently as an Indian and listening intently for any sound that might indicate trouble.
It wasn’t a sound that made him freeze a few moments later, though, his hands tightening on the rifle. It was a smell. The sharp, coppery smell of freshly spilled blood. A lot of blood.
For a long moment, Longarm listened even harder than he had before. As had been the case earlier in the night, the normal nocturnal sounds were all he heard. He took a deep breath. That was definitely blood he smelled, with an unpleasant tinge of human wastes mixed in with it. The scent of death, Longarm thought. He had smelled it too damned many times in the past.
Quietly, he moved deeper into the trees surrounding the camp, away from the direction of the river. That seemed to be the direction the smell was coming from.
The darkness was almost total, since very little of the light from the moon and stars penetrated the thick overhang of branches. Many of the trees were live oaks and still had their leaves, which blocked off that much more of the illumination. Longarm wished he could strike a match, but that would just make a target of him if anybody was waiting out there in the darkness.