Amanda replied, with some amazement, and a touch of amusement that she hoped wouldn’t hurt the clerk’s feelings. It was one thing to do a bit of necessary shopping in a town like this, but the very idea that she would actually stay here was, well…absurd.
The girl, however, didn’t seem to think it was so absurd. She was smiling now, angling her head toward a window in the back of the store. “Oh, yes, you are staying,” she said, just as the big black Union Pacific locomotive steamed past.
The smile on the clerk’s flat face widened, then twisted into what Amanda might almost have called a sneer when the girl added, “You need to buy anything else—toothbrush, toothpaste, a cake of soapto see you through till the next train comes?”
Outside the depot, Marcus leaned against a roof post and scraped a match on the sole of his boot. He’d declined the antelope steak and the griddle cakes, but accepted a cigar from a fellow passenger as they both stood contemplating the Wanted posters tacked up just inside the dining hall. Marcus had pointedly avoided looking at the posters in North Platte, hoping to forget for a while that he was a bounty hunter who’d just lost his last bounty to a hangman’s noose..
“Take a look at that one,” the cigar-smoking fellow had said, pointing to a fresh sheet of paper near the bottom of the array of torn and flyspecked notices. “Now that would be some catch, wouldn’t it?”
Marcus had been reading the Wanted poster for a bank robber named Ed Caragher, alias Chick McGee, alias Robert LePage, and wondering how the culprit kept his monickers straight when his gaze drifted to where the man was pointing. Reward, it said, in bold black print, and just beneath that Runaway Heiress. Of course, as soon as Marcus read the description—blond hair, green eyes, small stature, delicate build—he knew exactly who his damsel in distress was. Some catch, indeed.
He’d done his damnedest then to hide the predatory smile tugging at his mouth. “She’s a hundred miles from here, if she cut loose from the old lady three days ago,” he told the man beside him. “Probably already in Denver by now, if that’s where she was headed.”
The man had sighed, and Marcus had echoed it. A five-thousand-dollar sigh.
“I sure could’ve used that reward the old Grenville woman’s offering.” The man had lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Oh, well. I expect you’re right about that girl not being anywhere near here. Enjoy that cigar. Nice talking to you.” He’d shrugged again and began to walk away.
“Thanks. You too. And you know what they say,” Marcus had called after him. “Easy come. Easy go.”
They also said something about a bird in the hand, Marcus thought as he glanced around to make sure no one was watching when he surreptitiously took the poster from the wall, folded it and stashed it in his pocket.
That explained the duchess’s imperious behavior, especially her blithe request that the conductor hold the train. Amanda Grenville, described in the poster as the sole heiress to the Grenville Ironworks, was used to riding in private railroad cars that did indeed come or go at her command. Marcus was sure it hadn’t even occurred to her that the train wouldn’t wait. After all, time and tide and probably even the Almighty tended to stand still for the obscenely rich.
But little Miss Amanda Grenville was way out of her element now, no longer in that ethereal place where beautiful, spoiled goddesses snapped their dainty fingers to halt trains. Little Amanda was without a clue as to how the real world worked. She needed help even more than she knew. Poor little, rich little Amanda.
Marcus smiled. A slow, smooth, self-congratulatory smile. Poor little Amanda was in dire need of a knight in shining armor, and he—Marcus Quicksilver, hero, helper, honest, brave and true—was more than ready to fill that particular bill.
There had been a stampede of diners when the conductor called, “All aboard,” but there had been no one rushing from the opposite direction of the town, no breathless heiress hurrying to catch the train, so Marcus had hastily retrieved the hatbox and his saddlebags, and then he had led Sarah B. from her stall in the baggage car. The mare had been so happy to leave the train that she was as docile as a kitten, and she stood at a nearby hitching rail now, placidly whisking her tail at flies.
Marcus felt almost placid himself as he leaned against the post and lit his cigar. Five thousand dollars! The biggest bounty he’d ever brought in had been six years ago, when he captured Herman Culley, a murderer with two thousand dollars on his head. The local authorities in Texas had wanted him dead or alive, but when Marcus obliged them—not to mention spared them the time and expense of a trial—by bringing Culley in draped over his saddle, the politicos had reneged on the two thousand and only paid him fifteen hundred.
Five thousand dollars. There’d be no reneging with old lady Grenville, Marcus was certain. Five thousand was a drop in the bucket to someone like her. And to him? To him it was perhaps the future that he’d spent the past decade avoiding. Five thousand could buy a lot of land. Good land. By God, maybe it was time.
Marcus blew a stream of cigar smoke off to his left and picked a fleck of tobacco from his lower lip. He was intensely aware of the folded poster in his pocket. It already felt like folded greenbacks, and he wondered if the Grenville woman would come across with cash or a check. Of course, he hadn’t done anything to earn it yet, he reminded himself. Fantasizing about the reward was one thing. Bringing Miss Amanda Grenville in was something else entirely.
He was glad now that she’d gotten off the train. That saved him forcing the decision upon her. The fewer people who saw her, the better, because it was as sure as sunrise that every manhunter west of the Mississippi had already dropped whatever he was doing and was hot on little Amanda’s trail. It was also likely that every amateur with a five-thousand-dollar dream was searching for her, too.
For a minute, Marcus seriously considered tying her up and nailing her in a crate neatly addressed to Granny Grenville. That would not only garner him the reward, but would also put an end to hatboxes, snagged buttons, sharp elbows and all the other irritations the lady just naturally provoked. But it would also mean the end of those glorious green eyes and that fetching little mouth and…
Well, hell. It just wouldn’t be sporting, Marcus told himself. Half the pleasure of being a bounty hunter was the chase, in his estimation. Most of the pleasure, if he was to be brutally honest. The money had never meant all that much to him.
What was even better, he thought now, as he watched little Miss Amanda Grenville come flying down the street in his direction, was having his quarry run right into his arms. Into his waiting, helpful arms. Marcus took a last pull from his cigar, then dropped it and ground it under his heel.
“The train left!” She skidded to a halt beside him, and hardly had enough breath to get the words out. Her pretty face was flushed and damp, but those green eyes were dry and hot.
“Right on time, too.” Marcus bit down on a grin as he shifted off the post and gestured toward the fabric-covered parcel not too distant from his feet. “There’s your hatbox, Duchess. Don’t bother to thank me.”
If she heard him, she didn’t react. Nor did she express a tad of gratitude. Not that Marcus expected a goddess to be grateful to a mortal. Her gaze moved frantically around the platform. She waved her hands wildly. “Where’s my valise?”
He shrugged.
“I need my valise!” she wailed, not so much to him as to the Fates in general. “All my clothes are in my valise. And my hairbrush, too. And…and…” Her foot shot out and
