Liz Ireland - Millie And The Fugitive
- Название:Millie And The Fugitive
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And with good reason! She had never been so dramatically worn out and hungry. She’d spent many leisurely days riding her gray mare, but never on punishing rides like these. Poor Mrs. Darwimple! Millie felt almost as sorry for her horse as she did for herself. She simply had to convince Sam to head back to civilization.
“It would be stupid trying to get away from me,” Sam told her. “And don’t tell me that’s not what you’re planning, because I can see it in your sneaky eyes.”
The accusation fascinated her. “You think my eyes are sneaky?” No one had ever called her that before. Imagine, being branded sneaky by a desperado! “You know, I do believe that’s the first thing you’ve noticed about me.”
“Hardly.” He laughed bitterly. “Besides, I didn’t mean it as a compliment.”
“Oh, that’s all right. A girl does like to be noticed, though.”
He tossed his hands in the air. “You are the most confounded woman I’ve ever run into. Don’t you know you’re in danger? You should be angry!”
“I was.”
“Then you should have stayed that way.”
She made a tsking noise. Stay angry for two whole days? “That wouldn’t be very pleasant for either of us.” She had never had any call to endure that much emotional turmoil. Until now, of course. “Though I am mad about your decision not to go into town. I wouldn’t do anything to get away, Sam. On my honor.”
“I know, I know,” he muttered. “You’re renowned for your trustworthiness.”
“That’s right.”
“And your riding expertise.”
“Well, of course, I don’t like to brag—”
“Forget it.”
She couldn’t let him see her frustration—which was escalating rapidly. She’d never yet met a man she couldn’t wheedle into doing what she wanted. Sam might prove the first. Usually all it took was a little pleading, but he wasn’t softening a bit. Perhaps it was time to take more dire measures —like showing him exactly what kind of woman she was.
“Sam...”
After rolling his eyes, he looked over at her in irritation — until he saw that with what little mobility she had she was lifting her skirt up past her knee. Irritation turned to slack-jawed curiosity.
“I bet I can change your mind about going into town,” she said sweetly, flexing her small foot enticingly. “I have something for you....”
His eyes bugged at the glimpse of leg, but he shook his head vehemently. “S-see here now,” he stuttered in dismay. “Put your skirt back down!”
“It’s just my legs,” Millie said. “Same ones I had this morning. You didn’t seem to mind them then.”
His mouth clamped shut. “Never mind. Cover up.”
“But I wanted to show you something,” she argued, untying the small satchel at the waistband of her petticoats. She removed it, straightened her skirts and held out her offering primly.
“Oh...” he said, looking sheepishly at the velvet bag.
“It’s money. Count it,” she told him, “and you’ll see that you can trust me.”
Tentatively he reached out and took the bag from her, weighing it for a moment in his hand before loosening the drawstring. He upended the little purse and listened appreciatively as the heavy coins fell into his large hand.
“There’s twelve dollars here,” he said.
Millie smiled. “There! You see? I’ve shown you how much money I have. You can borrow however much you want. And the next time we see a town, we can just detour a little and buy ourselves some supplies. Maybe even stop over at a hotel...”
But even as she spoke, she got the oddest feeling that Sam really wasn’t giving much credence to her words. He calmly put the coins back in her purse, folded it over and placed it in the pocket of the deputy’s saddlebags he kept by his side.
“Aren’t you going to give me my money back?” she asked.
He looked at her as if she’d just sprouted two heads. “Hell, no!”
“But that’s stealing!”
Sam laughed at her. “Millie, didn’t that daddy you’re always going on about teach you to have a lick of sense? For two days you’ve been calling me a murderer, a criminal, a desperado. What did you think was going to happen to your money when you handed it over?”
“I showed you that money as an act of faith,” she argued. “So that you could trust me if we passed a town. I only wanted something decent to eat.”
He shook his head. “Good Lord, listening to you, a person would think you’d never been hungry before.”
For a moment, Millie racked her brains. “I haven’t,” she told him, a little surprised by the discovery herself. But why would a store owner’s daughter have to go without? “Until yesterday. And I must admit, I was rather excitable then—a little nervous about being kidnapped, naturally — so I didn’t notice so much. But today is entirely different.”
“Are you saying you’re not nervous anymore?”
“Well...maybe a little. But I’m just so hungry I don’t care,” she added with a moan. “And sore, and tired.”
“Then go to sleep.”
“I will when I’ve gotten my money back,” she insisted.
The petulant refusal brought her captor to his feet. He stomped over, fists balled at his sides, and towered over her. “Let’s get this straight. You’re not going to see that money again, unless I do think it’s safe to go into a town. But that’s for me to decide, you understand?”
His harsh tone irritated her — and scared her a little, frankly. She’d never seen such a hard look in his eye, or noticed him so on edge. She had half a mind to answer that she was a little on edge herself, thanks to him, but that she had the good manners to mask her foul humor. At the same time, something told her he wouldn’t appreciate a lecture on his bad breeding at this precise moment.
She tilted her chin up and contented herself with a curt “fine.” What more could she do? She was tied to a tree.
But, apparently, he wasn’t through with her. “You seem to forget sometimes who I am, and what you’re doing here.”
“As if I could!”
He paced restlessly in front of her. “Don’t you understand? You should hate me. You should be trying to escape, not giving me money.”
“I didn’t mean to give you the money,” she said.
“You shouldn’t have shown it to me, then,” he said sternly. “I’m a criminal, remember? A murderer.”
“You say the word as if you really weren’t one,” she said.
“What would you think if that was the truth, Millie? What would you say if I told you both my brother and I were innocent, and that I was on my way to bring a real murderer back to Chariton?”
“I’d say that was a likely story!”
“I didn’t kill those deputies,” he told her.
She scoffed. “Next you’ll be asking me to believe that I came along by my own free will.”
“No, I’m afraid that was entirely my fault,” he said. “But just consider this. Why do you think I brought you along, instead of doing to you what I did to the deputies?”
“Obviously,” she said, “because I’m such a valuable hostage.”
“So we’re back to that again.” He emitted a ragged sigh, then returned to his spot on the ground across from her. She could see him shaking his head as he lay back down. “Go to sleep, Miss Lively.”
He had dismissed her rationale as if it were absurd—as if she weren’t valuable to him at all. Despite the night chill, her cheeks grew warm at his lack of appreciation. It was almost as if he wished she didn’t have a wealthy father—a man most kidnappers would be proud to have their hostage related to! Instead, he was treating her as though she were a millstone around his neck. What an odd criminal.
What an odd man. She couldn’t forget the look on his face as she’d pulled up her skirt—as if looking at her leg were somehow painful to him. In a fit of self-doubt, Millie glanced over to Sam to make sure he wasn’t looking, then lifted her skirt again to check her legs for herself. They appeared fine to her. Better than fine. Irving Draper, her intended two fiancés back, had even had the audacity to remark on her shapely legs once, moments before she slapped him silly. It amazed her to think that a boring, conventional sap like Irving could appreciate her, while virile, dangerous Sam looked at her as if he wished she would cover herself with a potato sack. She could only guess that she didn’t compare well to other women of his acquaintance, who, given his character, probably consisted of floozies in fleshpots.
Now if that wasn’t insulting, what was?
A long, slim leg, pale and shapely in the moonlight. Sam didn’t think he’d forget that sight as long as he lived. Sweat popped out across his brow just from thinking about it. Millie was completely oblivious, of course. How could a woman be so prim, so haughty, and yet at times so completely heedless of propriety?
Because she was a pampered rich girl, he told himself. A young lady who considered herself so far above him that she didn’t find anything at all wrong about prancing around in wet, clingy clothes, or hiking her skirt up to her thigh. He was so far out of her circle of consideration that he might as well have been another species entirely, as far as she was concerned. Frogs and toads didn’t mix; escaped convicts didn’t mix with rich men’s daughters.
He would do well to put stock in that way of thinking himself. He had problems aplenty aside from Miss Lively. He had a murderer to catch.
He reached down and felt the small lump in his pocket and was reassured that the ring was still there. His evidence. In his mind’s eye, he could see the inscription on the inside. T to D, it read in bold script. He had a good idea that D stood for Jesse’s old partner, Darnell Weems. But he couldn’t be certain. And who was T?
Finding Darnell Weems was only half the battle — assuming he could even make it out to Little Bend, Darnell’s home, without being caught by the law. Most likely, Darnell wasn’t going to confess to killing his friend’s wife. Why should he, when Jesse was about to hang for the crime?
Jesse hadn’t been able to understand why his friend would have traveled halfway across a state to murder a woman he’d never met. He and Salina had married after he and Darnell parted ways. Yet he swore he’d seen Darnell riding away from the house while he was out hunting the night of the murder. Then, when he returned home, he’d found Salina, and the nightmare had begun. The law had arrived, and when it became clear that the sheriff meant to have his revenge on Jesse by painting him as a wife killer, Jesse, still half out of his mind with grief, had run. The ring had been discovered later by a kind old neighbor lady who was by Jesse’s to clean up the place. She’d promptly brought the engraved band to the jail, but the mysterious clue had interested Sam more than it had Jesse, who by the time it was found was beyond caring about his own life.
Jesse always wanted to think the best of people. But Sam had no illusions. After their parents died, Sam had tried to bring his little brother up to be practical. Jesse had the dreamer in him, though, and had gone his own way. He’d met up with Darnell in Colorado, and for two years the two of them had tried several schemes together — from cattle driving to gold mining. Finally they’d won two plots of land in a poker game. To decide who got which, they had flipped for them. That was the last they’d seen of each other, except for Jesse’s last brief glimpse of Darnell in the night. Maybe Darnell harbored some resentment for getting the lesser plot of land out west.
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