The rough muslin bed sheets lay in a tangle around them, the air still musk-scented. Fletcher glanced at his partner, whose breathing was as ragged as his own, and whose face was bathed in sweat. It had been a month since he’d bedded a woman. He stretched, flexed the muscles in his legs, and put his hands behind his head. He’d sure as hell made up for it tonight, he thought, feeling satisfied and just a little bit smug.
Hours earlier, she had opened the door wearing only a flower in her hair. Her luscious breasts with their big, brown nipples had jutted straight out, as if reaching for him, begging him to put his mouth around them—which eventually he had. The thatch of dark hair between her thighs had looked inviting; he went down on his knees to have a taste. From her scent, he’d thought he was going to burst the seams of his buckskins; his erection ached. She had tasted sweet and tart, and she was very, very wet, her labia swollen and her clit as round and hard as a pea.
Before she came, she had pulled him to his feet, reached down, and unbuttoned his pants. She pulled out his erection and then hopped into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist, pressing her wet, naked center against him.
He’d barely made it to the bedroom. They collapsed on the bed, already hot, sweaty, and eager. She’d almost torn his shirt off of him; had there been buttons, they would have flown all over the room. The first time was short, hot, and intense. She screamed when she came; he’d had to close his mouth over hers to muffle the sound. Then she dragged him into the kitchen, swung her arm across the table, sending the cloth and a basket of wildflowers flying, and perched on the edge. Spreading her legs wide, she invited him into her pink wetness with, “Come inside.”
He liked it that way, standing so he could watch himself move in and out of her, watch the moisture glisten on his erection as she became wetter and wetter, so hot and ready for him that her ankles were shaking as she balanced them on his shoulders.
Now, four hours after he had arrived on her doorstep, she reached over and moved her hand to his groin. “Are you ready for me, half-breed?”
He was already hard.
She squeezed him; he got harder.
“I can make it stand up again and salute that flag.” Her voice was heavy with seduction and the promise of sexual delights as she nodded toward the window, where the flag from the fort flapped in the dry wind.
He watched her closely, saying nothing. But as she continued to stroke him, he knew he wanted her again. In spite of his reluctance to stay, he couldn’t resist the urge to reach for her breast. Her nipple pebbled at his touch. He licked it, then the other. He raised his head. “When does your husband come home?”
“There’s time…” She purred and moved closer, nuzzling him like a big, warm cat. She threw one leg across his thigh and rubbed her calf over his groin. “He won’t be home until morning. I told you that.” She made more catlike sounds in her throat. “You sure feel ready, honey.” Then she pushed even closer and caught his thigh between her legs, pressing herself against his skin.
He slid his hand up to the furry patch between her thighs. “Some nice, proper white girl you are; you stay so damned wet.”
She gave him a lazy chuckle and spread her legs wide. “It’s you that makes me wet, half-breed.”
She had never used his name, although he was sure she knew what it was. Hers was Lindsay Bannerman. Her husband was a captain, an arrogant son of a bitch. She wasn’t exactly pretty, but she radiated sex like it was perfume. She had an ample ass—something that usually didn’t excite him, but once they had fallen into bed, it was there for him to grab as he battered into her while she begged him to do it harder and harder.
If he had any respect for her at all, he wouldn’t be lying here, exploring her wet and swollen folds. But like other white women of her kind, all she wanted was an Indian in her bed. He was half Indian; that was enough. He had no respect for a woman who cuckolded her husband.
He could bed them; he just didn’t respect them.
Early in his youth he had learned that his looks and silence drew women like this one, eager for what was between his legs and for the native wildness they thought came from his Comanche blood. The first time had been nearly ten years ago, when he was eighteen. He had screwed on horseback, with his partner facing him, her legs wrapped around his back and him deep inside her.
“C’mon, honey,” the captain’s wife murmured against his ear, nipping at the lobe, her hand touching him in long soft strokes. “I want you inside me, now.”
He heard a sound across the room and flipped her on her back, his hand over her mouth.
She fought him, clawing at his fingers.
“Shhh!” He listened for the sound again.
She pried free and tried to hit him. “You son of a bitch!”
All at once he faced a gun barrel. And the room exploded in light.
Geddes Gordon had feared this moment, had dreaded it. The old laird was dead and in no time at all, the laird’s grandnephew, Fergus MacBean, came sniffing around, waiting to be handed the estate. The prig sat before him now, buffed and polished, smug and arrogant.
“I don’t see the problem, Mr. Gordon.” MacBean flicked an imaginary piece of lint from his fawn-colored pantaloons. “The old man is dead and I’m a legal heir.”
“Aye,” Geddes answered, “but there is still the question of Shamus.”
MacBean expelled a derisive snort. “No one has heard from him in decades. He could be dead for all we know.”
“But we don’t know that for certain, do we?” Geddes countered.
MacBean stroked a bushy sideburn with a stubby finger. On an impatient sigh, he said, “My wife and I are traveling the Continent soon; we leave within the week. We’re spending a lengthy time in Paris, then we’re off to Vienna. She has relatives in Switzerland who are anxious for us to visit, then we’ll leave for Barcelona. Trust me, Mr. Gordon, I will return in one year to collect my inheritance. Make no mistake about it.” With that, he stood, picked up his greatcoat and his top hat, and, without so much as a nod, went to the door. Before he left, he added, “By the way, I’ll be requiring a new staff and will hire my own solicitor. Your services will no longer be necessary.” Then he was gone.
Geddes rubbed his hands over his face. If this entire estate was going to be saved from that spendthrift braggart, something had to be done. And Geddes feared he knew what it was. The idea did not appeal to him at all.
• • •
Six weeks later, Geddes Gordon looked out the stagecoach window, trying not to compare the hot, dusty, dry, monotonous landscape to the fresh, clean hills on the isles of Scotland. He failed miserably. This was where the old man’s heir lived? He closed his eyes against the harsh scenery. It was unfathomable that anyone with Scots blood in his veins could tolerate the hellish heat and constant dust. By the holy, it was winter and still hot as the very devil!
He tried to relax and gave himself up to the rocking of the coach, his thoughts returning to his last conversation with his sister, Rosalyn. It irked him to think she found him so weak. Yet he knew she was right—he detested traveling even as far as Edinburgh, but as the late Duke of Kintyre’s solicitor it was his duty to see the complicated terms of the will fulfilled. To do that, he had to find the new duke, the youngest son, Shamus MacNeil.
If he were unsuccessful, the fortune would go to Fergus MacBean and his profligate family, and then he and Rosalyn, who were living at the castle and caring for the estate, would be forced to find other lodgings. Not that they couldn’t, but they both loved the castle and its grounds. It would be a shame to see it all pissed away by MacBean.
“Do you remember much about Fergus MacBean?” she had asked him that same night.
He had related to her his last meeting with MacBean but did not go into detail or tell her of the prig’s plan to replace them. Rosalyn had looked worried, then asked him about Shamus. He told her what he knew: that Shamus was a good, God-fearing young man, whom many had thought might enter the church, until he suddenly left Scotland, almost overnight. Perhaps he knew that as the third son he had no reason to stay, perhaps wanderlust called to him. Soon after, Jamie died suddenly, but there was still Munro. Who’d have thought he would die, too? The MacNeil believed he would never die, and Geddes wondered if he had believed that, too. No one ever tried to locate Shamus and no word came back from America.
He remembered looking at his sister and again being amazed at how lovely she was. Rosalyn had perfect skin, a pert little nose, and thick hair the color of wheat shimmering in the sunshine. It was so fortunate that she was the pretty one, with her smaller features instead of his big ears and pointed beak of a nose. When he said as much to her, she scolded him.
“You are a handsome man, tall, broad-shouldered, and charming when you wish to be. And you have always been the cleverest and kindest man I know, Geddes, although you are a bit stubborn.” She had looked up from her sewing. “What will happen if Shamus is dead?”
“I can only hope that he has a bairn, Rosalyn, and let’s pray he’s a wise, upstanding young man, just as Shamus was, one who will continue to need our services.”
She had laughed then, a truly amused sound that had annoyed the very devil out of him. Rosalyn had this uncanny ability to laugh at the situations he found most distressing. She had told him he was too serious. He supposed he was. Yet her greatest liability was that she was too stubborn by half. When they were children, they had gotten into their mother’s garden and eaten berries until their faces were stained and their bellies so full they were ill. Their mother, not usually a violent woman, whipped them with a switch. Had she told them she was going to bake a pie for a very special visitor, they might not have partaken, Geddes had whimpered as each of the blows came. But Rosalyn had not. She stood straight and tall, unwilling to even flinch. Even her breathing did not change. Rosalyn did not show the world her pain.
“And what if this heir is a rakehell and a rogue, like his brothers and his grandfather?”
“Then God help us all,” he said aloud inside the coach. He had no idea who he might find at the end of his voyage. At the last stage stop there had been a message waiting for him. Shamus MacNeil had died a number of years before, but at the fort outside Cedarville, he would find Shamus’s son, the MacNeil heir, the next Duke of Kintyre. It gave him some hope that the heir would be an army man; the MacNeils had always been excellent soldiers in the service of their kings.
The stagecoach rocked as the whip master shouted, “Cedarville!” then stopped next to a dreary building.
Geddes got out, brushed off his gray wool trousers, buttoned his black cloth frock coat, and stared at the stark platform.
His grimy valise raised a cloud of dust as it landed at his feet.
Geddes coughed and waved away the parched soil that rose from the dirt-packed street, brought out his handkerchief, and coughed again. Sweat popped out on his forehead and quickly trickled through his eyebrows into his eyes. His body, laden with wool, seemed to scream for air. He squinted up at the sky. The sun beat down relentlessly.
Merciful God, how did people live in this oven? No lochs to be seen, no glens, no snow-covered hills. Nothing was green. Everything around was coated with a dry, dull film of dust that probably never went away. The only shade came from the slant of an overhang on the adobe station building. There wasn’t a tree in sight, just scrubby brush and gray bramble without roots that seemed to have the good sense to tumble away from this hellhole.
A cluster of enormous, dark, ugly birds circled in the distance. Buzzards, the whip master had called them, carrion crows that fed on the flesh of the dead. Geddes brought his handkerchief to his nose once again.
A gangly youth in a dusty, dark blue uniform ran out from the side of the station, his limbs loose and his sleeves so short his bony wrists protruded like bleached and dried animal bones. His trousers stopped at his boots, both grimy with dirt. His grin exposed big, horsy teeth. His shaggy dark hair stuck out in all directions. “You that Scottish fella who wired ahead? The lawyer?”
Geddes gave him a little bow. “Geddes Gordon, solicitor tae the MacNeil.”
The lad chuckled, as if Geddes had said something more amusing than merely his name and station. “I’m here to take ya to the fort.”
“Well, dinna keep me waitin’, ’tis anxious I am to meet the new MacNeil.”
The lad gawked at him. “Say, what?”
Geddes sighed. “Take me to the fort, laddie.”
• • •
Fletcher, Maker of Arrows, dropped to the dirty floor and did fifteen rapid push-ups, focusing on one of the many tiny holes in the adobe where thin rays of light shone through. Barely winded, he stood, avoiding the window and the sight of the scaffold barely twenty feet away. It was less than forty-eight hours until his death.
For the hundredth time he thought about his two younger brothers and his sister. Although his grandfather was looking after them, Duncan, Gavin, and Kerry had been Fletcher’s responsibility for three years now, ever since the deaths of his father and stepmother. At fifteen, fourteen, and twelve, they were still too young to fend for themselves. The letters he received were usually from Kerry and occasionally from Gavin. Duncan, it seemed, was not interested in writing his older brother. But the other two assured Fletcher that everything was well, that he should not worry about them.
Fletcher couldn’t stop blaming himself for the mess he had made of things. What he feared was that there had been trouble. Perhaps Grandfather had died; he had been an old man when Fletcher was young. But why, then, hadn’t one of them written? It wasn’t like Kerry, especially, to ignore him. The possibilities of what could be wrong gave him nightmares.
He placed his hands on the jail wall and stared down at the floor. He was a selfish ass, and felt a rush of self-loathing. Once he was hanged, they would be abandoned. What would happen to them when the money quit coming was anyone’s guess. He had made a promise to always care for them, and now he felt a deep sense of shame. He had lived his life with too many bad decisions. The trial was over. He was a convicted murderer and rapist. No one believed a half-breed over an army captain.
As he stared at the floor he asked himself if his life could have been any different. Could he ever have found a woman and settled down to raise a family as his father had? He didn’t know; he had never tried, nor had he ever met a woman with whom he desired to spend his earthly eternity. Hell, he was anxious to be rid of most of them after just one night.
A shout made Fletcher look outside. His gaze swept over the garrison, stopping briefly at the stables. He loved everything about horses—their power, their beauty, their lusty aroma, especially after a long, hard ride. He didn’t even mind the manure. From his cell he could smell them. He inhaled deeply, bringing the scent into his lungs and holding it there as long as he could.
He wondered if there were horses in hell. Probably not; they didn’t deserve to be there.
He caught the familiar stout figure of Captain John Bannerman exiting the infirmary with his arm in a sling from a knife wound. Anger and hatred welled up in Fletcher’s throat when he looked at the man. Wife killer.
Fletcher was guilty of stabbing him, in self-defense, but Lindsay Bannerman had died from a gunshot meant for him. He had bedded her, but Bannerman had murdered her, and then blamed him. There was one brief moment when he’d held the dying Lindsay in his arms, blood spreading in an ever-widening circle from the hole in her chest, and he had wondered what demon had brought him to this point in his life, when his selfish actions had been the reason this woman died.
He slumped onto the hard wooden slab with the dirty blanket that served as a bed. He heard voices, and then the heavy door between the jail and the cells creaked open. The sound of keys jangled from a chain. The sergeant in charge appeared. An oily man with bad teeth and a nasty, swaggering manner, he wore a look of mean superiority. “Breed!”
Fletcher looked up.
“You got a visitor.”
A big man wearing a dark coat and woolen trousers stepped up to the cell. He carried a leather case in one hand and a black top hat in the other. His thick, pale blond hair, heavy with sweat, lay flat against his scalp. Moisture glinted off his forehead like beads of water sizzling on a hot skillet. The man smelled of perspiration and damp wool.
With one mocking eyebrow raised, he studied Fletcher from his head to his boots, his expression less than pleased. He wore small wire-rimmed glasses that did nothing to hide the disapproval in his light blue eyes. He considered Fletcher, as if wondering how to proceed, then glanced at the sergeant and spoke. “Open the cell door and be gone.”
Fletcher hadn’t heard that lilting burr since he’d broken his father’s heart and ridden away. He never saw his father alive again. Another twinge of shame—if his father were alive, he would be so disappointed in him.
The sergeant muttered an oath under his breath, opened the cell door, and locked the man inside, giving them a scurrilous look as he left.
The Scotsman stared after him briefly, and then once again looked at Fletcher over the rims of his glasses, his expression drenched with disapproval.
“Who in the hell are you?” Fletcher asked.
“I’m Geddes Gordon, solicitor—”
“A lawyer? You’re a goddamned lawyer? Wasn’t one of you enough? They’ve already tried me. Look outside at those gallows.” He nodded toward the window, where the scaffold stood waiting. “How many lawyers does it take to hang a man?”
“You didna let me finish. I am representing the MacNeil, your late grandfather. I’m not here to hang you, Your Grace; I’m here to set you free.”
“‘Your Grace’?” Fletcher snorted with derision. “You’ve got the wrong man.”
“I don’t think so. You are the Duke of Kintyre.”
“Sure,” Fletcher said with a sarcastic smirk. “And some days I’m Napoleon Bonaparte, and yesterday I was President Buchanan, and, why, just last week I was your bonnie Prince Albert, but not today. Today, I’m just a half-breed who’s going to hang by a rope for a murder I didn’t commit.”
“I understand your confusion, Your Grace, but I don’t appreciate your sarcasm.”
“You don’t understand a damned thing if you think I’m going to get out of this hellhole.”
“I’m hoping that to be the case, Your Grace.”
The words began to sink in. “Who are you?” he asked again.
The lawyer fished into his pocket, brought out a card, and handed it to him.
Fletcher stared at it.
“Can you read?”
Fletcher gave him a scathing look and then read the card aloud. “Geddes Gordon, Solicitor to the Duke of Kintyre, Erskine MacNeil. Of the Clan MacNeil, Isle of Hedabarr, Scotland.” Once again he looked at the man before him.
“Your late grandfather.”
It had been many years since Fletcher had given any thought to his father’s name and what it stood for. When Fletcher had fled his home at fifteen, he had claimed his Indian name, Fletcher, Maker of Arrows, leaving the MacNeil surname far behind. “Explain why you’re here.”
“Your grandfather, the MacNeil Himself, died. You are his heir, since your da, Shamus, is dead.”
“But my father wasn’t the heir. He told me so years ago. His brother Jamie was, then Munro. He joked about how his father had an heir and a spare, so he knew where he stood.”
“Aye, until Jamie was struck with influenza and died, then about six months ago Munro broke his neck racing his horse. Shortly thereafter, the MacNeil, God rest his soul, passed on. Shamus MacNeil, your father, became the next Duke of Kintyre.”
“And my father is dead.”
“Aye, so that leads me to you.” The lawyer looked around him, once again lifting one mocking eyebrow. “Here in prison.”
Fletcher just stared at him.
“I was hoping that you’d be an honorable army man. I didna think you’d be a bloody redskin…or a murderer.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
The lawyer offered him a wry smile as his gaze swept the cell. “Aye, right. You’re just sitting in here for the pleasure of it. I can see how you might enjoy the place—the splendid accommodations and all.”
“I didn’t kill her,” Fletcher repeated.
“No? Then why are you here?”
“Because this,” he said, his voice heavy with disdain, “is United States Army justice.”
“In a bit of a pickle, then, aren’t you?” The lawyer gave him a wry look.
Fletcher barked another short, wicked laugh. “To put it mildly, yes, I’m in a bit of a pickle,” he answered, mimicking the burr of his visitor.
They studied one another for a long, quiet moment, and then Fletcher asked, “So, now that you’ve found me, what are you going to do? Use your clever lawyer double-talk to get me out of here?”
“You’re the heir,” Geddes answered simply. “You have money and title and a castle.”
“And I’m sitting in this stinkhole of a jail, sentenced to hang.”
“Yet you say you’re innocent.”
“I am,” Fletcher shot back.
The lawyer took a step back. “Well now, don’t go apoplectic on me, Your Grace. Open your mind to other possibilities.”
I’m here to set you free. Fletcher wanted everything the Scotsman said to be true; God, how he wanted that. He began to pace. Bits and pieces of memory filtered back to him, like the stories his father had told of Scotland, the castle, the land. But could any of it be real?
The Scotsman seemed to read his mind. “You’re a rich man now.”
“Here, even a rich half-breed can’t buy justice.”
“It wasn’t justice I was thinking of buying.”
Fletcher crossed his arms over his chest and digested this. Money. A title. Land. “If this is some kind of cruel, monumental joke you’re pulling just two days before I’m to die, then I’m sorry if I don’t find it one damned bit funny.”
“’Tis no joke, Your Grace.”
Fletcher sobered. It sounded very, very appealing, like some kind of tale right out of a child’s book, one where no one died in the end. Resisting the urge to fully believe something that was clearly a miracle, he snorted a humorless laugh. “How do you propose to get me out of here?”
The lawyer gave him a sly look. “Don’t you worry, I have the means and I have a plan. Soon you will be out of here and on your way to Scotland, Your Grace.”
Your Grace. It beat the hell out of breed. Fletcher’s brain buzzed as he continued to think. “There is something you must do for me. I have two younger brothers and a sister.” He gave the solicitor their names and then added, “I want you to find them and arrange for them to come and live with me.”
“Three more bairns of the MacNeil?” The lawyer frowned, scrubbed his chin, then nodded. “Aye, that can be done.” He gave Fletcher a skeptical glance. “Find them, you said. You don’t know where they are?”
“I did. They’ve been living with their grandfather. I’ve been mailing money to a bank in Abilene for their care, but I haven’t heard from any of them in two months. No letters, nothing. I can’t find them from this cell. I’m worried that something has happened.”
The lawyer’s visage was grim. “And armed with this meager bit of information, I’m to find them?”
“You found me, didn’t you? I can tell you where they were last living. If you won’t give me your word, I won’t go with you.” Perhaps a hollow threat—if he didn’t get out of this cell, he was a dead man. Not quite the scenario he’d pictured for the remainder of his life. “And didn’t you say you work for me? Consider it your first job.”
“Getting you out of here is my first job. But…” The solicitor sat on the bed and opened his satchel. He leafed through the contents and apparently found what he was looking for. He handed Fletcher another card, this one with the name of a detective agency out of Galveston emblazoned on the front. “’Tis how I found you. I’ll wire them immediately. Give me all the information you have.”
Fletcher gave him the material he needed, then said, “You have two days before I’m out there swinging from a rope.” He wondered if he could really believe any of this, and every time he looked at the scaffold, he was afraid to let himself hope.
• • •
It was almost dawn when the night guard woke Fletcher.
“Come here,” the guard whispered.
Cautious, Fletcher rose and went to the bars. The stink of liquor was heavy in the air.
The man glanced toward the door and then quickly unlocked the cell. “I’ve unlocked both doors. Don’t go nowhere ’til you get the message,” he said under his reeking breath. “I’m turning my back and leaving town with the wad of money that Scotsman paid me. Run, breed, run like me.” With that, the guard stumbled away.
Moments later a rock came in through the barred window and landed on the floor. Fletcher picked it up and opened the note attached. It read:
Detective agency on board; the search has begun. A horse is tied behind the jail house. Meet me in Galveston, my lord, onboard The Bonnie Lass.
It crossed Fletcher’s mind that this could be a trap, but he was going to die tomorrow, so what did it matter if they shot him tonight? He crammed the note into a pocket inside his shirt, walked over to the cell, and pulled open the door. He glanced around him and listened, hearing nothing but the strong drumming of his heart as it slammed his ribs. He stepped into the dark walkway and moved quietly toward the heavy wooden door that led from the cells, grateful there were no other prisoners locked up.
So this was how Fletcher, Maker of Arrows, MacNeil, with the help of a wily Scotsman, escaped his death sentence and disappeared into the mist on The Bonnie Lass, which ferried him to his new home—and freedom.