Nobody's Darling

Billy swung around, but closing his eyes didn’t block out the sight of her. He could still see the hope brightening her eyes, the smile trembling around her lips.

She was his Duchess. She deserved to live in some fancy house with servants to wait on her hand and foot. She deserved to enjoy the adoration of the family she’d yearned for ever since she’d lost her own. She deserved a whole hell of a lot better than a bounty hunter with a price on his head and bad blood in his veins.

Billy swallowed hard before forcing himself to turn around. If he was going to be man enough to break her heart, then by God, he was going to be man enough to watch it break.

Praying he’d spent enough time in Jasper’s wretched company to do a tolerable imitation, he choked up a mocking grin. “That’s mighty generous of you, honey. Most women don’t appreciate how precious a man’s freedom is to him.”

A frown clouded her smooth brow. “Your freedom? I don’t understand.”

“Oh, don’t misunderstand me, sweetheart,” he said, dangling his arms through the bars. “We had a fine time last night, you and I, but that’s no reason to go and do something foolish like get ourselves hitched.”

Esmerelda took a step toward the bars. Her stricken expression made him feel more like a monster in a cage than a man in a cell. Her voice lowered to an agonized whisper. “Why are you doing this? You called me Mrs. Darling. You said you wanted to marry me. You said you loved me.”

“Hell, angel, a man’ll say a lot of things when he’s trying to sweet-talk a pretty girl into his bed. Right, Drew?” He winked at his friend.

If Esmerelda had turned at that moment and caught even a glimpse of Drew’s appalled expression, she would have known Billy was bluffing. But she was too busy recoiling from the bars. It was Anne who cast Drew a piercing look, Anne who put her arms around Esmerelda when her niece backed into them.

“There’s one possibility we haven’t considered,” Anne said quietly. “What if there should be a child?”

The duke purpled. Esmerelda’s hand went instinctively to her belly.

Billy hesitated, knowing his next words would forever damn him in her eyes. He sobered, no longer able to keep up even the pretense of a smile. “There won’t be. I saw to that myself.”

Esmerelda would never know that he’d deprived himself of savoring that last surge of rapture inside of her to keep from trapping her into marriage to a man she might not want come morning.

“Thank heaven for small favors.” The duke pulled a monogrammed handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket and mopped his brow, too relieved to notice his granddaughter’s alarming pallor.

Esmerelda’s eyes glittered like burning coals in her ashen face. Her lips were no longer trembling with grief, but with rage. If she’d had a gun in her hand at that moment, Billy knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he would have been a dead man.

She drew herself out of her aunt’s arms and approached the bars, bringing him a whiff of peaches so sharp and so sweet it was all he could do not to cry.

A scornful smile curved her beautiful lips. “I can’t begin to tell you how relieved I am, Mr. Darling. Spending a night in your bed wasn’t so dreadful, but the thought of enduring a lifetime of your boorish company was simply more than I could bear.”

Although her words drew blood, Billy refused to flinch. She deserved to say her piece. He owed her at least that much.

“I do hope you’ll choose to remember me fondly. Perhaps someday you can travel back to Missouri and marry one of your cousins, as men of your breeding and ilk are wont to do.” She turned her back on him, sweeping her skirts in a graceful arc. “Come, Grandpapa, Aunt Anne. We don’t owe this man another scrap of our time or our money. He’s been paid”—she cast one last bitter glance over her shoulder—“in full.”

The door slammed, ringing like a gunshot in Billy’s ears. He staggered around as if he’d been struck in the heart and sank to a sitting position with his back against the wall.

Drew waited a merciful interval before strolling over to the cell. “It ‘s not too late, lad,” he said softly. “I can still hang you if you want.”

Billy slanted him a pained smile. “Hell, Drew, we both know hanging’s too good for the likes of me.”

Drew slipped his keys into the lock and turned, letting the door swing wide open. Billy didn’t budge. He had nowhere left to go. He sat there with his eyes closed while Drew quietly let himself out of the jail. He sat there while Miss Kitty trotted into the cell and rubbed against his legs, meowing plaintively He sat there until a small, white-gloved hand reached down to give his shoulder a gentle squeeze.

“Mr. Darling?”

In the instant before he opened his eyes, he had the crazy thought that Esmerelda had come back. That, despite his best efforts, she’d refused to believe the worst of him. That she was going to throw her arms around his neck and press her sweet, soft mouth to his before giving him a stern lecture about the perils of trying to protect her from herself.

But when he opened his eyes, it was Anne Hastings who stood before him.

She met his grim gaze with a candor as unflinching as her niece’s. “I know what you did, sir. And I want to thank you. I promise that I’ll do everything in my power to see that Esmerelda gets the home and the happiness she deserves.”

Billy rose. “I’d be much obliged if you’d do that, ma’am. ”Cause if you don’t, you and that highfalutin brother of yours will answer to me.“

Without another word, he went striding out of the jail, leaving Anne staring after him in astonishment.

The day Billy Darling went riding out of Calamity for the last time, whores cried and dogs howled. He rode tall in the saddle as he always had, his gunbelt slung low around his hips, his Winchester in its scabbard.

The cowboys who’d spent their days playing poker with him down at the Tumbleweed Saloon whispered that it wasn’t another gunslinger who finally got him, but a woman. The whores at Miss Mellie’s Boardinghouse for Young Ladies of Good Reputation bawled so hard that the cowboys offered them silver dollars just to stop.

Old Granny Shively told her friend Maude that if she’d been of a mind to marry, that Darling boy would have made her a fine husband. The decent folk of Calamity pretended they were glad to be rid of such a shady character, yet more than one of them stepped out of their shops and houses to lift a hand in silent salute as he passed.

He was nothing but a shadow on the horizon when that old basset hound of his escaped from the sheriff’s office and went loping down the street. When she reached the edge of town, she sank down on her grizzled haunches, threw back her head, and let out a howl that broke nearly every heart that heard it.

Later, there would be many who would swear he’d reined in his mare and stood silhouetted against the sunset for a timeless moment. Some expected him to turn back. Others were not surprised when he spurred his horse into a canter and disappeared over that hill.

They all saw Billy Darling leave Calamity that day, but not one of them saw a lace curtain high in the window of the hotel twitch, then fall still.

Part Three

I don ’t want your greenback dollar.

I don ’t want your silver ch ain.

All I want is your love, darlin ‘.

Won ’t you take me back again ?

I ’d rather be in some dark holler,

Where the sun would never shine,

Than to see you with another,

When I know you should be mine.

American Folk Song

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Esmerelda had everything she’d ever wanted. A grandfather who adored her. All the food her belly could hold. A home that no bank or creditor could ever take away from her.

In his quest to grant her every wish, her grandfather had even hired a genuine Pinkerton detective who’d managed to locate Bartholomew in South America. He’d also grudgingly promised to act as the boy’s patron, sending him a generous allowance for each chapter of his novel he completed.