Chapter Five

 

Gabriel followed the sounds of strife with some irritation. Dammit, he’d wanted to sleep and pick up Ivo Hardwick in the morning when the villain would certainly be sleeping off a hangover. But the noise from the saloon below was keeping him awake. Not to mention the combined effects of Sophie Madrigal and that damned prediction of hers. Was it really a family curse? He wouldn’t put it past her to lay a curse on him.

Not that he believed in such idiocy. Gabriel Caine knew full well that the nation’s current love affair with occultism was silly, mainly because mysticism—Juniper Madrigal and her absolute honesty notwithstanding—was pure hogwash. People couldn’t be cursed any more than they could achieve eternal salvation. He mentally asked his late father’s forgiveness for thinking such a thing, no matter how much he believed it.

So why did he still feel itchy and uncomfortable every time he thought about that damned prediction? It was all trash, and he knew it. Somehow, however, knowing it didn’t much help. Shoot, maybe he was just going crazy.

In the meantime, he was irked as hell at all the noise. He stopped dead on the stairs when he saw what the clamor was about. Then he pelted down the last of the staircase and strode with purpose over the cluster of men harassing Dmitri in a corner. Gabriel hated bullies with a passion.

He positioned himself with his back to a wall so nobody could shoot him from behind. He didn’t like violence, and he sure as the devil didn’t aim to become a victim. “What the hell’s going on here?” he asked in his deepest, loudest, and most dangerous voice.

One of the bullies, a big man with whiskers and a large belly, staggered a little, looked up with bleary eyes, and said, “Huh?” He held Dmitri’s right arm in a ham-like hand. Poor Dmitri was struggling valiantly, to no avail, to get his arm back under his own control.

Gabriel rolled his eyes at this. Maybe Sophie was right about the preponderance of men. This crew sure seemed to be a worthless lot. “Step away from Dmitri, fellows.” He smiled as he said it.

“Who’s Dmitri?” asked the potbellied individual.

“Who says so?” another man, larger and darker than the first, asked in something of a growl.

Gabriel sighed, pulled his revolver, cocked it, and said, “I do.”

Potbelly dropped Dmitri’s arm immediately and took a step back, nearly falling over a chair in his haste. He lifted his hands, palm out. “Hey there, fella. I ain’t doin’ nothin’.”

“Right,” said Gabriel. He made a gesture to the large dark man. “Back up, friend.”

“I ain’t your friend,” muttered the dark man.

“True,” agreed Gabriel.

Another two men, who had been laughing and poking at Dmitri, backed away, evidently not relishing the prospect of gunfire. Thank God. Gabriel didn’t relish it either.

“What right you got to inter’up our fun?” asked the dark man, and he hiccupped.

“The same right any man has to interrupt unfair play,” Gabriel said reasonably. “Hell, man, what fun is it to pick on somebody that small? Find somebody your own size and make a fair fight out of it.”

The dark man hitched up his trousers and leered evilly.”Like you?”

“I’d rather not,” said Gabriel, hoping the idiot wouldn’t charge.

His hopes came to naught. With what looked like it was supposed to be finesse, the large dark man lunged at him. Gabriel stepped aside, caught the man by the back of his shirt, hauled him upright, and tapped him behind the ear with his revolver. The man sank to the floor like a stone.

Gabriel, having never stepped away from the wall, asked obligingly, “Anyone else?”

Nobody answered him, but several of the men who had been harassing Dmitri held up their hands and backed away.

Gabriel kept his gun poised and ready. “You all right, Dmitri? Any damage that needs a doctor’s attention?”

Dmitri was pulling himself together, tugging at his overalls and searching the floor for his cloth cap. He found it, whacked it against his trouser leg, and said, “No. I’m good.”

“Glad to hear it. Want to get out of here? I’ll walk you home.” He kept his back against the wall and never once stopped scanning the saloon’s occupants. Gabriel didn’t fancy unpleasant surprises.

He was surprised when Dmitri shook his head. “Nyet. Miss Sophie. She go outside with a man.”

“She what?” So startled was Gabriel by this intelligence, rendered in Dmitri’s deep guttural Russian accent, that he took his attention away from the men in the saloon for a second. It was just long enough for one of his adversaries—the dark one—to lunge at him. Gabriel foiled his attempt to throttle him with a lift of his right leg, catching the lout in the stomach with the flat of a hard boot sole. The creature doubled over, clutched his midsection, and started retching.

Wrinkling his nose, Gabriel said to Dmitri, “Come with me. We’ll see what she’s up to.” He wasn’t altogether sure he wanted to know. If he discovered Sophie outside reading the man’s palm, he’d be pleased. He anticipated nothing of such a nature, however, and he felt a little sick at the thought of Sophie in another man’s embrace.

But that was stupid. If she were engaged in amatory activities, why would she seek and find her lover in this squalid saloon? Gabriel didn’t understand anything about Sophie, really, but he thought he knew her better than that.

Sidling against the wall and keeping his revolver trained on the company, he headed toward the door, Dmitri a stolid and morose accompaniment. Gabriel breathed a sigh of relief when they left the stale atmosphere of the Oriental. He didn’t dare holster his revolver yet, but his nerves no longer shrieked.

“Do you know where she went?” he asked his small companion?

“Yah. In the alley.”

In the alley? Good God. Gabriel could scarcely believe it of the magnificent Sophie. If she were no more than statuesque tart in disguise, he’d be terribly disappointed.

Gabriel heard her before he saw her. He also heard her companion, whoever he was, and what the two of them said made his nerves commence jumping again, worse even than before.

“I do believe I’ll shoot you in the stomach,” Gabriel heard her say. “Then I’ll have the pleasure of watching you die slowly and in great pain.”

“Jesus,” Gabriel whispered, appalled. What in the name of glory was she talking about. Her voice sounded funny, an eerie blend of pain and exultation.

“You’re crazy,” the man with her said, his voice shaking as if a violent wind was blowing it.

“Perhaps,” she said calmly, pleasantly. “But if I am, you made me so.”

“But I didn’t mean it!” the man cried. Gabriel clearly heard the panic in his voice. “Dammit, lady, it was a mistake! I didn’t mean it! It was an accident!”

“Oh? I see. You murdered in error, so you should be forgiven? Is that so?” An uncanny, unearthly chuckle emanated from the darkness of the alleyway. “I don’t think so, Mr. Hardwick.”

Hardwick! Good God in a graveyard! Gabriel sped up. He barely heard Dmitri speed up, too, and commence trotting behind him. What in holy hell was Sophie Madrigal going to shoot Ivo Hardwick for?

“I didn’t mean it. Shit, lady, I didn’t mean it!” Hardwick started to sob.

“I don’t care what you meant, Mr. Hardwick. You’re an animal. A rabid animal. Rabid animals need to be exterminated so they can’t infect the rest of humanity. And I’m very happy to be the executioner in this instance.”

“No!” Hardwick wailed.

Gabriel was out of breath by the time he screeched around the last corner and saw Sophie, illuminated under the pallid light of an upper-story window, holding a small gun on Ivo Hardwick, who held his arms in the air and shook from head to foot with terror.

Both Sophie and Hardwick heard Gabriel arrive. Sophie swirled around, and Gabriel saw an expression of blind panic on her face the second before her gun discharged. The report sounded like a cannon blast in the confines of the alley. Dmitri hit the dirt behind Gabriel. Gabriel swore viciously.

Sophie screamed, “Damn you, Gabriel Caine!”

Nobody heard what Hardwick said, but when the dust cleared, he was scrambling over some fallen trashcans, making for a tiny space between buildings. Sophie, seeing this, tried to aim at him, but Gabriel caught her by the wrist and struggled to foil her aim. He had a hideous vision of Sophie killing Ivo Hardwick and hanging for it—and of him wiring the Pinkerton Agency and telling him he’d been thwarted by a female. The notion made him sick.

“Stop it!” she screamed. “Let me go!”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Gabriel hollered, too furious by this time to be the least bit nervous.

“I was trying to kill that man!” Sophie shrieked. “Until you spoiled it all!”

“Why the hell do you want to kill him?”

“Damn you!” Sophie cried again.

“To hell with damning me!” Gabriel hollered back. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? I think you shot Dmitri!”

“What?” Wriggling like a maddened animal, Sophie glared over Gabriel’s shoulder in an attempt, he presumed, to assess any damage to her faithful compadre. Her attention thus diverted for a second, he wrenched the gun out of her hand and stuffed it into his back pocket. It was a tight fit.

“Nyet,” Dmitri muttered. He picked himself up with some difficulty and tried to dust himself off. Given the state of the alley, Gabriel wouldn’t give him odds.

“Thank God,” whispered Sophie, and struggled harder.

“No thanks to you,” Gabriel growled, gripping her more tightly. “You might have shot him. Or me, for that matter.”

“I wish I had shot you. Damn you!” Sophie shrieked again, renewing her struggle. “You were only trying to scare me when you said I’d shot Dmitri!”

“Christ,” Gabriel said, enraged. “I think you’re crazy.”

“I’m not!” she bellowed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Well, then, tell me, for God’s sake!”

“Never!”

Gabriel figured he wasn’t going to win this argument anytime soon, so he elected to save his breath. He needed it to keep a clamp on Sophie, who wasn’t giving up easily.

She fought like a wildcat for about a minute. For fully half of that time, Gabriel feared he wouldn’t be able to contain her. For all her soft femininity, Sophie Madrigal was no China-

doll miss. She was a large, full-bodied female—a fact Gabriel used to appreciate a lot—and she was strong.

He was still bigger and stronger than she was, however, and she began to tire after about thirty seconds of furious fighting. He held her wrists and pulled her body to his in an effort to stifle her struggles. She was more than a handful, and Gabriel would have appreciated her succulent body pressed against his had the circumstances been different.

“Let me go!” Her voice was weakening. Gabriel thought he heard despair in it.

“No,” he said flatly, still angry. “I’ll be damned if I’ll let you go until you quit fighting me.”

She gave up all at once, and with a wretched groan collapsed into his arms. Confused for a second, Gabriel wondered if she was trying to trick him. He wouldn’t put it past her. He was horrified when he realized she was crying. More than crying, really. Huge, wracking sobs shook her body.

“Here,” he said softly, loosening his grip but not letting her go. In fact, he pulled her more closely to his body. Her patent misery hurt him, a fact he would have found astonishing had he taken time to think about it. “Here, Sophie, don’t cry. It’s all right.”

“It’s not,” she moaned pitifully. “It will never be all right again.” Gabriel felt awful. Her emotional pain was so overtly evident, that his heart—that part of his anatomy he’d successfully ignored for years until Sophie Madrigal obtruded herself into his orbit—ached for her.

He searched over the sobbing Sophie’s pretty blond headin an attempt to locate Dmitri. After a minute, he saw the little man, leaning against a building, trying without much success to pat the dust off himself by smacking his clothes with his cloth cap. Dmitri looked up, took a gander at Sophie’s condition, shook his head, and was about to return to his work when Gabriel caught his eye.

“What’s wrong with her?” Gabriel mouthed, exaggerating the shape of the words for Dmitri’s sake.

Dmitri shrugged, which didn’t help much, and went back to whacking at his coat sleeve. Gabriel, realizing he wasn’t going to get any help from that quarter, returned his attention to Sophie.

“Oh, Lord. Oh, God. Why?”

The words were broken into pieces by her anguish. Gabriel thought the word “heartbroken” would have been appropriate to her condition. It surprised him. Sophie Madrigal? Sophie, the great stone monument to womanhood? The impenetrable fortress against his most devious wiles? The beautiful ice maiden with the little ugly dog?

Shattered. That word fit too. Gabriel couldn’t stand it much longer. If she carried on in this vein for another few minutes, his own fortifications would crumble, and he’d be groveling at her feet and begging her to let him take care of her. He’d sooner join a monastery and be celibate for life than let that happen.

Since he still felt sorry for her, though, he was gentle when he next spoke. “Sophie? Here, Sophie, let me take you back to your hotel. I’m sure Miss Juniper will be worried about you.”

After sucking in a shuddering breath, Sophie seemed to make an attempt to get herself under control. She pulled away from Gabriel a little bit, but he didn’t let her go, and not only because he remained worried about her state of mind. He also harbored a soupçon of doubt about the veracity of her emotions. Although, he had to admit to himself, if she was acting, she was doing the best job he’d ever seen in his entire life—and he’d been reared by actors, more or less.

At last she lifted her head from where it had been buried against his shoulder, leaving a wet patch that felt cool in the evening breeze. Gabriel gazed down at her in an attempt to assess her state, and his heart reeled.

Good God, the woman wasn’t acting. Or if she was, she was another Bernhardt. “Here, Sophie. Here, take my handkerchief and wipe your eyes.” He used the gentlest voice he’d ever heard issue from his lips, nearly startling himself into looking for a stranger in the alley. But the voice had come from him, and he realized it in a second.

She took the handkerchief in hands that shook and wiped her cheeks and eyes. No makeup was thus removed, Gabriel noticed, thereby proving his belief that Sophie’s charms were natural.

She whispered, “Th-thank you.”

Since she didn’t add anything else, not even a disparaging comment about his morals, behavior, or person, Gabriel judged she was still pretty well upset. “Are you—better?” He had been going to ask if she was all right but, remembering her last response to the same question, he altered it.

She nodded and blew her nose.

That was all right with Gabriel. He’d gladly sacrifice a handkerchief to the cause. “Are you able to walk, Sophie? Do you need me to carry you?” It surprised him to realize he’d be happy to carry her—over hot coals, if necessary. He considered this a bad sign and endeavored to toughen his newly found heart.

“No!” she said with some force, from which Gabriel deduced with an internal sigh that she was recovering her composure.

Rather than snap back at her, he repeated mildly, “Are you able to walk, Sophie?”

She sniffled, took a tentative step away from his embrace, which displeased him, and nodded again.

“You sure?” She was looking up at him so forlornly that Gabriel wished he could kiss her. Her lips were succulent in the dim light of the alleyway, and she looked so unhappy. Everything about her roused instincts within him that had never been roused before. This, too, was bad, in his opinion. How the prickly, unpleasant, self-sufficient Miss Sophie Madrigal could be stirring his protective instincts was beyond him—except that at the moment she wasn’t prickly, she wasn’t being unpleasant, and she was far from being self-

sufficient.

Struggling to get his own emotions to behave themselves, he said softly, “I’ll walk you back to the hotel now, Sophie.”

He stopped himself from asking her if that scenario met with her approval, because he feared she wouldn’t give it. And he wasn’t going to let her go again tonight until he was absolutely sure she was safely tucked up and in the gentle, caring hands of Miss Juniper.

She nodded again, then said, “Where’s my gun?”

Damn. She would remember the blasted gun, wouldn’t she? He said, “Your gun is safe, and I’m not going to give it back to you now.”

Her eyebrows dipped. Gabriel considered this the first real sign of her improved mental health. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t trust you with it.”

She sniffed, but didn’t argue. Gabriel thought wryly that he’d been right not to trust her with it.

“Come on, Sophie. If you’re well enough to walk, I’ll see you and Dmitri back to the Cosmopolitan. I’m sure your aunt is wondering what’s become of you.”

“She knows.” Sophie’s voice sounded oddly dull. Gabriel chalked this phenomenon up to emotional exhaustion brought about by her recent temper tantrum.

“I’m sure she doesn’t know you tried to shoot a man.”

Sophie shrugged, as if she didn’t care if he believed her or not. She was acting very much like an individual who’s given up something precious—who’d fought hard and been defeated. Her attitude made Gabriel’s insides hurt. He jerked a nod at Dmitri. “You all right, Dmitri?”

“Yah.” The little Russian looked as morose as ever, but as he didn’t limp or look bloody, Gabriel took him at his word.

“All right. Let me support you, Sophie.”

“I don’t need you to support me.”

For the first time since he’d met her, Gabriel was pleased to hear the grouchiness in her voice. She’d be all right now; he was sure of it. At least, she’d recover from this particular fit. He had no idea what had propelled her to announce that nothing would ever be all right again. Maybe he could get Miss Juniper to tell him. Never having experienced an itch to learn about another person, Gabriel mistrusted this one. Hell, maybe he was turning into a gossip in his old age.

He had his arm around her shoulder still, and Sophie’s weight still pressed against him. He found himself wishing it would stay there all the way back to the Cosmopolitan. Her body was soft and supple and the parts he could feel through the fabric of her shirtwaist felt grand against him. He’d noticed her bosom with approval before; now he felt it with equal approval. He hoped one day he’d be able to see it, although he wasn’t going to hold his breath.

Slowly and with great care, he led her down the alley, around the corner, and out into the street. There, lights from the buildings flooded the boardwalk and the motley assortment of men milling about. Several men glanced at Sophie, Gabriel, Dmitri. One or two of them looked interested in Dmitri. Three or four of them looked interested in Sophie. One astute fellow garbed as Gabriel imagined a dapper gambling man might be, winked at him as if to congratulate him on his conquest. If he only knew. Still, Gabriel discovered himself pleased to know that he’d been taken for Sophie’s lover.

Shoot, he was sinking fast. The notion terrified him and, at the same time, made him feel kind of good. Whatever was to come of his strange relationship with Sophie Madrigal, at the moment, he was enjoying her lush flesh pressed against him.

Alas, she straightened after a few steps, and her pace picked up.

After about two more minutes, she turned her head and looked up at him.

“Thank you, Mr. Caine, I believe I am able to walk on my own now.”

Gazing down into her watery eyes, Gabriel found himself loath to release her. “I think I’d better help you a little while longer.”

He heard Dmitri make a disparaging, snorting noise, and frowned at the little man. Dmitri looked no different than he ever did.

“I’m perfectly able to walk on my own,” Sophie said with a hint of the old grandeur back in her voice.

Gabriel sighed lustily. “I’m not going to let you walk home with only Dmitri to accompany you, Sophie Madrigal, so don’t even think it.” Something else occurred to him and he said grumpily, “And for God’s sake, call me Gabriel. Hell, woman, I’ve stopped you from committing murder and held onto you through a sobbing fit. I think we should be on a first-name basis by this time.”

“Do you?” The ice was back with a vengeance. Gabriel wished it wasn’t. “Oh . . . very well.”

That was something, he reckoned. At least he could call her Sophie and she could call him Gabriel. What a thrill.

Neither of them spoke, nor did Dmitri, as they finished tramping along the mean streets of Tucson. For a relatively small territorial town, the place was noisy. Gunshots rang out twice, dogs barked, and Gabriel was pretty sure he heard coyotes yipping in the distance. Not the kind of place he’d prefer to settle down in, if he were the settling-down type. Nor, he imagined, would it appeal to Sophie, even under more favorable circumstances and when she wasn’t trying to kill someone.

And why, for God’s sake, was she trying to kill someone? And why Ivo Hardwick? Gabriel knew full well that Hardwick had a criminal record as long as the Florida boot, but what was he to Sophie? Had Hardwick swindled her or her aunt? Had he done something beastly to Sophie?

Gabriel couldn’t feature that possibility, since Sophie was probably stronger than the skinny Hardwick. Had he seduced and abandoned her?

That notion had no sooner entered Gabriel’s head than he thrust it violently out again. There was no way on God’s green earth that Sophie Madrigal could have become sexually entangled with Ivo Hardwick. Gabriel’s every nerve ending rebelled at the thought.

No. It must be something else. Although he expected it would be a hopeless question, he asked, “Um, so why were you trying to kill that man, Sophie? What is he to you?”

“Nothing,” she shot back immediately, and said no more.

Gabriel wished she weren’t such a difficult female. He spent a moment or two trying to make his mind’s eye picture an agreeable, obliging Sophie Madrigal, and was singularly unsuccessful. The concept was so insane, in fact, that it startled a chuckle out of him.

“What are you laughing at?” Sophie asked in a hard, suspicious voice.

“Not you,” Gabriel said.

She muttered an unintelligible syllable. Gabriel grinned into the semi-darkness. “Actually, I was trying to feature you as a sweet-tempered, mild-mannered lady.”

“Don’t be an ass.”

“That’s my Sophie.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Gabriel gave up. He did, however, notice that Dmitri seemed to be smiling. Gabriel had never seen Dmitri smile before. It almost gave him heart.

He had no sooner knocked at the door to Sophie and Juniper’s room than the door burst open and Juniper, looking frightened, stared up at him. Tybalt, with more animation than Gabriel had ever seen him display, yipped once and jumped up to paw Sophie’s skirt. Juniper’s eyes widened when she saw Sophie, and she pressed her hands to her cheeks for a second before she reached for her niece.

“Sophie! Oh, Sophie, what did you do?”

Interesting choice of words, Gabriel thought dryly. Juniper knew her niece well enough to know that it would have been Sophie who’d started any trouble that had transpired. Sophie wasn’t as understanding.

“I didn’t do anything,” she said crossly. Releasing her aunt, Sophie stooped and picked Tybalt up. Immediately the dog began licking her chin, and Sophie made cooing noises at it.

Gabriel’s heart went all mushy before he pulled himself together and spoke to Juniper.

“She tried to kill a man,” he said with what he hoped looked like a genial smile for Juniper. Dmitri had gone back to his own room. “I stopped her.”

“She what?” Juniper threw her arms around Sophie again, making Tybalt squeak and Gabriel smile at the sight of the tiny Juniper hugging her large and imposing niece. “Oh, Sophie, you found him.” She sounded certain.

Gabriel ceased smiling. “If you’re talking about Ivo Hardwick, she found him all right. Why was she looking for him, is what I want to know.”

Sophie growled, “Juniper.”

But Juniper evidently didn’t need the warning. She let Sophie go and stepped away from her with a deep, soulful sigh. “I won’t tell, Sophie. But, really, dear, you know Mr. Caine can only help you. The cards say so.”

“Do they really?” Gabriel found this intelligence quite interesting and not altogether unwelcome.

“Balderdash,” Sophie announced, thereby soundly rejecting the cards, Juniper, and Gabriel with one word. She stalked over to the bed and laid Tybalt gently down on a quilt that looked as if it had been placed there specifically for him. The ugly pug dug wildly at the quilt for a second, pushed his squashy nose into it, flipped it up a little, crawled under it, and settled down to rest.

Gabriel was charmed. He also wasn’t surprised that Sophie had thrown himself, the cards, and Juniper out as if they meant nothing to her.

Neither, apparently, was Juniper, although she appeared saddened by her niece’s hard attitude. She rushed up to Gabriel and laid a placating hand on his sleeve. “Won’t you stay and have a cup of tea with us, Mr. Caine? I’m sure Sophie should thank you for your part in saving her from shooting Mr. Hardwick, but she can’t be made to be grateful for such things yet. You must give her time, because she’s been so grievously—”

“Juniper!”

Juniper jumped and squeaked at Sophie’s violent roar. She glanced accusingly at her niece. “I shan’t say anything you don’t want me to, Sophie.”

“Mr. Caine doesn’t need to know anything—not one, single, solitary thing—about me, Aunt Juniper. Thank you.” She yanked off her hat and, with a violent gesture, flung it on herbed. “He can stay for tea if he wants to,” she added grudgingly.

“Why, thank you, Sophie. What a pleasant invitation.”Although Gabriel was sorry, because Juniper began wringing her hands in agitation—she obviously didn’t care to listen to dissension—he couldn’t keep from sounding sarcastic.

Sophie whirled and pinned him with a glare. “It’s not an invitation. Juniper already issued the invitation. It’s merely resignation. I know blasted well you don’t want to leave yet. You want to stay and try to figure out what’s going on with me.”

“I’d say you’re on the money there,” Gabriel acknowledged mildly.

“Well, you can’t do it. However, since you’re a man and as obtuse and disobliging as most of the other men in the world, I expect you’ll have to find it out on your own.”

And with that, she sailed out of the room once more. Gabriel started after her, worried that she’d try to find Hardwick and tackle him with her bare hands since Gabriel still held her gun, but Juniper forestalled him.

“Please don’t chase after her, Mr. Caine.” Her voice was small and sad. “I believe she’s only going to the washroom. She—she needs a little time to herself, I believe.” She gave him a ghost of her usually perky smile. “I’ll fix the tea.”

And, over a small portable burner that looked as if it had been traveling with the Madrigal entourage for fifty years or more, she did. She was right about Sophie, who returned in a few minutes, with her face looking pink and scrubbed.

Sophie was also right. Gabriel had thus far learned not one tiny thing that might give him a clue as to why she seemed determined to kill Ivo Hardwick, not even when she’d been in the throes of hysteria.

He perceived this job of his wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d first imagined. As he settled himself in a chair at Miss Juniper’s insistence, he mulled over this last point in his brain—and grinned.