look at you.” He poked his straw hat higher on his brow, then angled his head and narrowed his eyes, studying her. “You don’t strike me as a Jane or a Ruth. Not a Mary, either. Am I right?”
Amanda fashioned a smile that told him he was not only right, but amazingly clever to boot.
The salesman’s gaze roved from her face to her bodice, paused there for a long leer, then came back to her face. “You’re a tiny little female. Real delicate. Mind you, I can tell despite your ruffles and pleats, being in the business I’m in. Ladies’ underclothes, remember? But petite as you are, I’d be inclined to guess you’ve got a longish name.” He scratched one muttonchop thoughtfully. “Hmm… Elizabeth, maybe?”
“No.”
“Eleanor?”
Amanda shook her head.
“I’m getting warm, though. Right?”
Warm? Yes, Amanda thought the man was getting quite warm, actually. His beefy face was flushed a bright pink now, and several beads of sweat were glistening above his upper lip. Suddenly she didn’t think that playing a guessing game with this man had been such a good idea. First of all, he was coming frightfully close to her true name. And second— worse—Linus Dobson seemed to be playing an altogether different game now as he shifted his bulk in the seat and thrust a huge arm around Amanda’s shoulders, pulling her closer, very nearly crushing her against him while attempting to suffocate her with the scent of peppermint and onions.
“Whatever your name is, honey, you’re the prettiest little thing I’ve seen in weeks. What do you say when we get to Sidney, the two of us… well…” He bent his head and whispered, his hot, foul breath and indecent proposal both almost scorching Amanda’s ear.
She felt her jaw dropping and her mouth framing an indignant but speechless O. She couldn’t utter so much as a squeak, but as it turned out, she didn’t have to, because just then a low, lethal voice cut through the gathering dark inside the coach.
“How ‘bout changing seats with me, pal? I’d like to sit next to my wife.”
Linus Dobson moved fairly fast for a man of his enormous bulk. First he wrenched his arm from around Amanda and then he shoved up from the seat, hovering there all scrunched up in his huge plaid suit while Marcus—with catlike grace and speed—slid across the narrow aisle and into the space beside Amanda.
“I…I didn’t know,” the salesman babbled, cramming his hips and shoulders into Marcus’s vacated seat. “How could I have known? She…she didn’t say anything.”
“I’m saying it.” Marcus’s voice was as sharp and as cold as the blade of a knife, and then, as if to make his point, he reached out and scooped up Amanda’s hand. His grip was hard and tense at first, almost hurtful, but it slackened immediately to a gentle possession.
“I’m…I’m sorry, ma’am,” Linus Dobson said. “I’m truly sorry.”
There was a tremor in his voice, and the poor wretch looked absolutely terrified, as if he wished he could dig his shoulders so far into the horsehair seat that he’d simply disappear. Amanda stole a glance to her right, toward the man who’d struck such abject fear into the peddler and turned him instantly from boisterous rogue to quivering wreck. Even in the coach’s dim interior, she could see that Marcus Quicksilver’s face seemed dark and hard as cast iron. His mouth bore a harsh, even cruel curve, and his blue eyes had deepened to a fearful midnight hue. Amanda found herself thinking that she was enormously relieved that this thundercloud in human form wasn’t angry with her.
But then it occurred to her suddenly that it was she who had every reason to be angry with him. How dare he interrupt her conversation and interject himself into her affairs! The nerve of the man! The absolute gall! Did he think she couldn’t look out for herself when an idiot like Linus Dobson made advances? Did he consider her a helpless dolt? On top of all that, the man had had the sheer, unmitigated audacity to proclaim himself her husband! Her husband, of all things!
“I have a bone to pick with you, Mr. Quicksilver,” she hissed.
“Not now, Mrs. Quicksilver,” he growled.
Deep in his corner across the way, Linus Dobson gasped, as if someone had just thumped him soundly between the shoulder blades. He stared stupidly across the aisle for a second, then inserted a finger beneath his collar, as if trying to obtain enough air to speak. “Quick—Quicksilver, did you say?”
“That’s right,” Amanda snapped.
The salesman made a little strangling noise now in the back of his throat. “That wouldn’t be the Quicksilver out of Denver, would it? Marcus Quicksilver? The bounty hunter?”
“The—?” Before she could get the next word out, Marcus’s grip tightened on her hand, pressing her fingers together painfully.
When he spoke, his voice dropped to a menacing register. “I think we’ve all done about enough jabbering for a while. Let’s just sit real quiet now and enjoy the rest of our ride, shall we?”
It wasn’t a question, but rather a cold command that Linus Dobson immediately obeyed, snapping his gaze to the window, apparently discovering a sudden fascination with the dark landscape outside the coach. Amanda, on the other hand, wasn’t about to be stifled quite so easily.
“Are you?” she asked in a voice intended for Marcus alone. “Are you what he claimed?” She was hoping—oh, God, how she was praying—the answer would be no. “Tell me, Marcus. Tell me this minute, or I’ll scream. I swear I will.”
“Yes,” he whispered harshly, and his fingers curled more tightly around her hand. “Now be still.”
She was still. Small and still as a mouse in a trap, her fingers in the iron grip of his. Amanda felt as if her heart had been punctured. Hot tears welled up and began to sting her eyes. She’d been caught! All along she’d been caught, and she hadn’t even known it!
It was dark when they pulled up in front of the torchlit stage office in Sidney.
“End of the line,” the driver yelled. “Everybody out. Don’t forget your hats, gents. Ladies, mind your gloves and parasols.”
Linus Dobson didn’t even say goodbye. After almost exploding from the coach, the salesman snatched up his valise and sample cases the second the driver removed them from the boot, and disappeared into the night. Marcus Quicksilver had let go of Amanda’s hand only long enough to grasp her waist and help her out of the stage. Then he led her around to the rear of the vehicle, where he began to untie his horse.
“Don’t do anything foolish, Miss Grenville, like trying to run away,” he warned her while he drew a leather rein through a round metal hoop.
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it.” Amanda crossed her arms and chewed on her lower lip. For the past hour in the coach, once the shock of her capture— the insult of it!—had worn off, she’d come to a few conclusions about her predicament. Reluctantly, she’d conceded that she’d been outwitted by the notorious bounty hunter. But he was, after all, a bounty hunter, which meant that money was important to him.
