her hand, turned it over and slapped the four coins into the palm of her glove. Hard.
“My pleasure, miss,” he said through clenched teeth. “Enjoy your trip.” And here’s hoping I get hit by lightning before I ever set eyes on you again.
Marcus was still muttering to himself half an hour later as he settled into his seat in the crowded railroad car. He’d had the devil’s own time getting his horse, a chestnut mare he’d christened Sarah B., up the ramp of the baggage car and into her narrow stall. Like her dramatically famous namesake, Sarah Bernhardt, the horse was temperamental. She rarely acted up when the two of them were alone on the trail, but seemed to prefer an audience, usually one of chortling, tobacco-chawing geezers who took great delight and purely perverse pleasure in Marcus’s predicament.
He sat now with his saddlebags on the empty seat beside him, his arms crossed over his chest and his legs stretched out, anticipating a halfway-decent nap once the train got under way and its rocking motion began. It ought to be fairly quiet until the train pulled into the next meal stop, in Julesburg. He listened to the big locomotive building up its head of steam, felt the floor beneath his boots begin to tremble, then heard the conductor bawl out, “All aboard!” Marcus let his eyes drift closed.
With a little luck and a little nap, he hoped his foul temper would dissipate. Maybe his luck would change, too. He hadn’t been lucky of late. Not a bit Now he was just about broke. Again.
Not that it mattered all that much, Marcus thought wearily. A lifetime ago, when he became a bounty hunter, more out of necessity than by choice, his plan had been to collect enough bounties until he had the cash to buy a decent piece of land and try his hand at farming again. Even try his luck at marriage one more time.
He was no closer to that dream today than he’d been a decade ago, and it made him wonder—when he allowed himself to think about the pain of the past and the blank slate of the future—if maybe he really didn’t want that dream to come true.
Hell. Maybe a man was only meant to be lucky once in a lifetime, and his all-too-brief marriage to Sarabeth had been his own brief portion of good luck.
He sighed roughly, shrugging off the haunting memories, settling deeper into the upholstery. Even more than good luck now, he needed the healing power of a good, long sleep.
“Excuse me.” Someone jabbed his shoulder. “I said excuse me, sir. Would you be good enough to remove your belongings from this seat?”
Marcus didn’t even have to look up. That haughty voice was almost as familiar to him as his own now. Her face, as well. Those money-green eyes would be narrowed on him, cool and demanding, and her luscious mouth would be thin with impatience. He hesitated a moment, as if he hadn’t heard her, before he reached over to grab hold of his saddlebags and shove them under his seat.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.” Marcus angled his hat over his eyes once more and crossed his arms, more determined than ever to fall asleep, despite—or maybe because of—the feverish activity in the adjacent seat.
She sat. She sighed. She got up. She muttered under her breath and then she stepped on Marcus’s foot.
“Sorry.”
“It’s all right,” he grunted, his eyes still closed.
“I can’t seem to get this hatbox properly situated up here.”
He’d just about talked himself out of the chivalry business entirely when the train lurched forward and the damsel and her hatbox both wound up in his lap. It nearly knocked the breath out of him, but Marcus knew it wasn’t the fall so much as the feel of her that made his chest seize up.
Suddenly he was caught up in complicated silken curves and corn-silk hair. He remembered now asking to be hit by lightning, and he was fairly certain that his wish had just been granted. When he swore, it came out as a beleaguered sigh.
“Hold still,” he told her as she wriggled on his lap.
Somehow a strand of her blond hair had gotten wound around his shirt button, and the more she squirmed, the worse it got.
“I’m caught!” she squealed.
“Hang on a minute.” He tried to unwind the silky lock of hair.
“Ouch!”
“Hold still, dammit.”
“Ouch!”
“Aw, hell.” Marcus ripped the button from his shirt. “There. You’re free.”
She scrambled off his lap and managed to step on both his feet before retaking her seat. Once there, she fussed with her curls and her clothes, paying no attention to Marcus and blithely ignoring the hatbox, which was still on his lap.
He counted to ten. Slowly. Practicing the patience of a saint. Nine saints. Ten. He sighed. “Your hatbox, miss.”
And just as Marcus had known she would, she looked at him with her rich green eyes, flicked him a small but still imperious smile, and suggested he stash the hat box in the rack overhead.
“By all means, Duchess,” he muttered under his breath as he got up to cram the box into the wire rack. He half expected her to hand him a nickel when he sat back down, but she didn’t. His imperious duchess—the little brat—was already fast asleep.
“Sleep tight, Your Ladyship,” he whispered, knowing his own hopes for a nap had been blasted to smithereens by the mere fact of her presence.
Her Ladyship slept through two scheduled stops to take on water and one abrupt, unscheduled stop when a herd of southbound buffalo took a full five minutes to cross the Union Pacific tracks. She slept with the faith and innocence of a child, even during the commotion when all the passengers shifted from window to window to watch the passing herd. All the passengers except Marcus—former knight errant—whose sole function at the moment seemed to be in serving Her Ladyship as a pillow.
He didn’t mind so much. God, she was pretty. Not that he put a woman’s looks above other qualities. He didn’t. Sarabeth hadn’t been a beauty, by any means, but Marcus had loved her sweet disposition and her sprightly wit and—most of all—her ability to turn any grief or sadness into sunshine. This woman appeared to have the disposition of a shecat, but she was still a pure pleasure to look at. Marcus liked the warmth of her as she leaned against his shoulder, the feel of her soft hair just brushing his cheek and the occasional riffle of her breath on his jaw. He didn’t mind so much being used as a pillow.
What he minded, though, was that when the train finally stopped in Julesburg, Her Ladyship awoke all smiling and refreshed, while he felt like and most probably looked like a rumpled bed. A bed that suddenly remembered that its headboard ached like hell.
She sat up and stretched like a dainty cat, then smiled and exclaimed with innocent surprise, “Oh, I must’ve dozed off.”
“For a minute or two,” Marcus said, rolling his neck and his left shoulder to loosen the kinks and get the circulation going again.
She
