Laurie Grant - The Duchess And The Desperado

“If I were a man no one would question it,” Sarah observed. “Why should I not get to take a Grand Tour just as if I were a man? I’m duchess in my own right, after all, and I want to do it.”

“But men do their Grand Tour in Europe,” her sister noted.

Now it was Sarah’s turn to make a face. “We went to Paris with Papa, did we not, and on to Italy? The Continent doesn’t interest me. No, I want to see America—especially the vast open spaces of the West, Kat—ah, Kathryn. It must be so exciting to live there—not like tidy old England, with its manicured lawns and ponds, and quaint little towns several hundred years old. I need to see that before I settle down as ‘the duchess’—and as Thierry’s wife, as wonderful as I know that will be,” Sarah said. She willed Kat to face her, but Kat remained rigidly staring out the window. “And besides, it’ll give me a little breathing room away from Her Majesty’s incessant demand that I marry the boring Duke of Trenton, who’d be my equal in rank. Come, Kathryn, you must agree it’s delicious to imagine Victoria fuming when I return home married to the Count of Chatellerault instead?”

Kathryn slowly turned to face her, her lips reluctantly curving upward. “Yes...I can just imagine the queen wringing those plump hands. All right, I suppose you will go no matter what I say. But tell me—are you going to wear your glasses when you’re touring?”

Sarah breathed a sigh of relief that her efforts to mollify Kat had finally succeeded enough that she had turned to teasing. “Hmm...I suppose it depends if it’s just us—Uncle Frederick, Donald, Celia and I. You know how vain I am about being seen in my spectacles.”

Kat smirked. “I can just imagine—you’ll come back and we’ll ask what the most impressive sight was and you’ll wave your hand and say ‘I don’t know. It was all just a blur.”’

Sarah didn’t mind the sisterly taunt, for she’d always admitted vanity to be her worst failing.

“I’ll see you at dinner, Sarah,” Kat said, moving toward the door.

“All right, but where are you going in such a hurry?” Sarah asked, picking up the gown she’d discarded only moments ago. It wasn’t her favorite, but it would be good for traveling.

“Oh, Thierry said he’d take me riding while you were busy packing,” Kat murmured over her shoulder, her hand already on the door. “Since he won’t be meeting you in New Mexico right away, he’s rather at loose ends, too, you know.”

Sarah smiled and bade her sister enjoy herself. It was good of Thierry to keep Kat occupied, but perhaps she should speak to her fiancé later this evening and warn him that her younger sister had conceived a tendre for him. She knew she could count on Thierry to let Kat down easily.

Chapter Two

Denver

Colorado Territory

July 1872

“Oh, Celia, do look,” Sarah breathed, gazing out the window as the train wheezed to a stop. She pointed at the distant Rocky Mountains, still snow tipped even though it was midsummer. The sight was enough to make Sarah forget the discomforts of the journey. “Are they not magnificent? Even the Peak District has nothing to compare with them!” She felt the headache that had plagued her all through the jolting, swaying ride slipping away.

“Yes, your grace,” her dresser muttered, though she only glanced momentarily at the magnificent mountain range that stood sentinel over Denver. “We’ve been seein’ them for the past two hours.” She was nervously watching the motley throng on the station platform from the other side of their luxurious private railway car that had brought them all the way from St. Louis.

“But we can see them so much more clearly now. Just one moment, Celia, and I’ll be ready to disembark,” Sarah said, folding her spectacles and putting them safely away in her reticule. Not for the world would she have appeared among strangers wearing them. “Carry this, would you please, dear?” she said, handing her servant the reticule. No doubt she’d need her hands free for greeting those who came to welcome her.

The crowd gaped and pointed at the Duchess of Malvern and her entourage as they disembarked from the train at the Kansas Pacific Depot, but to Sarah, minus her spectacles, they were a buzzing blur.

“They’re so rude, the way they stare. You’d think they’d never seen a duchess before.” her dresser muttered to no one in particular.

Sarah chuckled, saying, “I’m sure they haven’t, Celia. This is America, after all. They do not have duchesses here.”

“Nor manners, your grace,” her dresser retorted as one gawker came even closer and, after blowing his nose noisily on a dirty handkerchief, pointed at the Paris creation on the duchess’s head.

“Oh, do stop grumbling, Celia, and take a breath of the fresh, bracing Western air—that should clear out the cobwebs!” Indeed, her own headache was fast diminishing, and she felt almost human again.

“I believe that is Pikes Peak in the distance, your grace,” Donald Alconbury, her secretary, murmured in her ear, pointing at the high peak in the distance. “Indeed, the air is very clear here, or we should not be able to see it.”

“Ah... beautiful...” she murmured, though of course Donald had forgotten she could not distinguish it from the others without her spectacles.

“I can’t imagine where the welcoming committee must be,” fretted Lord Halston. “I telegraphed the time of your arrival, and I was promised no less than the mayor and the territorial governor on hand to welcome you to Denver. But perhaps they await us inside the depot,” he said, motioning toward the large, two-stoned brick building behind them.

“Then go and fetch them, uncle,” Sarah said serenely, turning and heading for the rear of the train. “I intend to see Trafalgar properly unloaded.”

“But, your grace, your groom will see to that,” her dresser fussed. “Come inside, do. Look, there’s another of those noisy monsters pulling in, and it’ll blow soot all over your clothing!”

The second train’s whistle shrieked, splitting the air as it wheezed to a stop a little behind and on a track parallel to the one that had just brought the duchess and her party from St. Louis Just as Celia had predicted, the locomotive’s huge smokestack belched a cloud of smoke.

Sarah paid no heed to the down-drifting particles of soot, however. The train had almost immediately begun disgorging its human contents, and as she passed the open space between one car and another, her attention was caught by a particular passenger who was just stepping down from the other train onto the ground.

With just a few yards between them, she could see him well enough. He was tall and lean and wore a wide-brimmed hat, denim trousers, boots and duster coat. A saddle was slung over one shoulder; he carried a pair of saddlebags in the other hand. His hair was a shade of brown so dark it could pass for black except in bright sunlight, and he needed both a haircut and a shave. He might be handsome once properly groomed—though very different from Thierry, of course—but at present he just looked dangerous, Sarah decided, watching as he narrowed his eyes in the direction of the station house, then started striding toward the rear of the train he had just left.

A sudden wind blew the side of his unbuttoned duster backward, exposing a pistol riding in a holster on his hip. The presence of the pistol confirmed the air of danger he carried with him. A desperado, thought Sarah, remembering the lurid covers of the cheap novels she’d seen on sale not only in America but in London, too. Perhaps he was an outlaw! But no, surely outlaws did not travel on trains like normal, lawabiding folk. He was probably just an ordinary cowboy, she told herself. Standards of grooming were not the same here as at home. But she was not convinced.

As if aware that he was being watched, however, he paused and looked between the two cars, right at her. Sarah was close enough to see a pair of green eyes studying her from the top of her modish hat to the tips of her buttoned kid boots.

He must have approved of what he saw, for a slow smile spread over his beard-shadowed, lean face and warmed the green of his eyes. He let the band of leather that connected the two saddlebags slide back on his forearm, which enabled him to touch the brim of his hat in a manner of greeting. Then he resumed walking and was lost to her sight.

Sarah felt heat rising up past the pleated edge of her cloak. She’d been looking at him—staring, in fact—and the cowboy had caught her at it and stared right back! Why, his grin had been cheekier than a Cockney beggar’s!

She’d been stared at before, especially since coming to the United States, but somehow his bold, direct gaze had affected her differently. For the life of her, though, she could not say why she found his look energizing rather than merely annoying.

In any case, Sarah reminded herself sternly, she must not waste time gaping at the locals. She needed to ensure the safety of her mare. Walking down to the front of the car that she knew held Trafalgar, she was in time to see the door slide back and her groom emerge, bending to extend the wooden ramp down onto the ground.

“Ben! How did she weather the journey?” Sarah called out.

“Well enough, your grace, though she didn’t fancy that other train pulling in next to this one,” Ben Huddleston, her wiry old groom, informed her. “Been tossin’ and plungin’ about these last few minutes, she has.”

Sarah could hear the thudding of hooves as Trafalgar protested against the boxcar’s walls. “Well, bring her out. She’ll settle down once she gets out of confinement, I’m certain.”

Ben doffed the tweed cap he was never without. “Yes, your grace.” He disappeared back into the depths of the boxcar, and Sarah could hear the groom speaking soothingly to the high-spirited thoroughbred, and the mare’s snorting, stamping retort.

Sarah smiled. Trafalgar had always been a fractious traveler, and the groom’s advice had been to leave the hunter at home in Herefordshire. “The sea voyage alone will shatter her nerves, Duchess, not to mention all the roamin’ around that barbarous country. Why not breed her, your grace? By the time you come home, the foal could be weaned and you’ll be back chasm’ the fox on your mare again.”

“Are you more worried about the mare’s nerves or yours, Ben?” she had teased him. “I wouldn’t think it fair to impose on Trafalgar the very thing I’m trying to escape myself,” she had added lightly, and laughed as the implication of her last remark had brought a blush to Ben’s cheeks. “Well, it’s true. My uncle is pressuring me to marry and so is the queen, but having just reached my majority, I can’t imagine why I should settle down meekly and marry whoever the queen thinks suitable for me! I want my favorite mare with me, and so she shall come. She’ll do fine, you’ll see.”

What the Duchess of Malvern wanted, she got, and the tall bay thoroughbred had been brought along. If anyone’s nerves had been shattered in the course of the ocean voyage and the “roamin’ around” the United States of America, it had been Ben’s, not Trafalgar’s.

As she waited for her mare, Sarah glanced down the track, but she could no longer see the dangerous-looking American. Too bad, she thought wryly. He had probably never seen such a fine horse as Trafalgar in his life, and she had imagined his eyes widening as he glimpsed her with her handsome hunter. She had been sure he would be impressed.

C’est la guerre, as Thierry would have said. Why did she feel any need to impress such a man, anyway? She was the Duchess of Malvern, and she had the world at her feet. Once she was reunited with her dashing Thierry, she would indeed have everything!