A scarlet haze descended over Billy’s eyes, blinding him with rage. He took a step forward, fully intending to launch himself across the fire and wipe the sneer off his brother’s pretty face with his fists. But that was before he remembered that Jasper was only believing exactly what he’d wanted him to believe.

His amiable smile still couldn’t completely buff the dangerous edge from his voice. “That might be true, Jasper, but it’d be the last ride you ever took. Last time I checked, horse thieving was a hanging offense.”

Still spoiling for a fight, Jasper started to rise, but Virgil clapped a hand on his shoulder. “No need to scrap, son. I’m sure Billy only meant to say you were hung like a horse.”

Enos and Sam stuttered out a nervous laugh while Virgil pried the whiskey bottle out of Jasper’s clenched hand and offered it to Billy, along with one of Billy’s own cigars. Jasper might be the brains of the gang, but Virgil had always been the muscle.

Billy accepted his brother’s peace offering and sank down on the opposite side of the fire. Still acutely aware of Jasper’s glare, he made a great show of wiping the mouth of the bottle on his sleeve before lifting it to his lips for a desperately needed swig. He had hoped the rotgut would sear Esmerelda’s taste from his mouth, but it only intensified the yearning ache in his belly.

While he struck a match and lit the cigar, Sam finished off the jerky with an audible gulp and shot Sadie a predatory glance. “I shore is hungry. A fellow can grow mightily sick of canned beans and prairie dog.”

Billy patted his thigh. Sadie ducked out from under Enos’s hand and waddled to his side. He rewarded her for her obedience by gently stroking her grizzled muzzle. “I can assure you, Samuel, that my Sadie ain’t near as tasty as those tender little ears of yours.”

Sam sheepishly jerked down his hat and helped himself to a ladle of steaming beans.

Billy hid his smile behind a long draw on the cigar and another swig of whiskey. “Where you boys headed? I figured you’d be off somewhere raising hell instead of stuck out here in the middle of it.”

Enos opened his mouth, but Virgil’s booming voice drowned him out. “We been thinkin‘ about headin’ south. To Mexico City.”

Billy’s spirits soared. Blood might make them brothers, but the badge tucked into his shirt pocket would make them mortal enemies. He’d love to see them well on their way to Mexico before he was forced to make use of it.

“A wise choice,” he said. “I hear there are opportunities to be seized and fortunes to be made in Mexico City for enterprising young gentlemen such as yourself.”

Virgil and Jasper exchanged a furtive glance, but it was Enos who piped up. “We ain’t g-g-goin‘ to Mexico just yet. We’re on our way to Eulalie first.”

“Eulalie?” Billy echoed. He caught the smoldering cigar before it could tumble out of his slack mouth into his lap and disguised his blossoming dread with a bark of laughter. “Why Eulalie? I’ve always heard the only thing uglier than the town is the women who live there.”

This time it was Virgil who opened his mouth and Enos’s high-pitched giggle that drowned him out. “Why, we’re g-goin‘ to Eulalie to rob us a b-b-bank!”

CHAPTER TWELVE

When Esmerelda awoke, the heat had yet to tighten its relentless grip on the day. She sat up and pushed the blanket aside, indulging in a languid stretch. An arid morning breeze caressed her hair.

She smiled to find Sadie curled into a shapeless lump at her feet. If the dog hadn’t wheezed out a melancholy sigh, Esmerelda would have been tempted to pry open one droopy eyelid and make sure she was still alive. Bemused, Esmerelda shook her head. Who would have thought she would sleep so soundly wrapped in a coarse blanket on a sandy rock next to a snoring hound with four incorrigible outlaws camped only a stone’s throw away?

But as her gaze fell on the man sleeping across from her, she understood why.

Her guardian sat with his back against a rock and his hands curled around the stock of the Winchester laid across his knees. His position had to be painfully uncomfortable. He must have nodded off only after a long and harrowing battle with exhaustion.

Esmerelda found Billy’s vigilance oddly irresistible. She’d forgotten what a luxury it was to sleep while someone else kept watch against the night.

Rising to her knees, she crept closer, eager to study him without the shield of his hat. Even in sleep, his was the wary face of a man who had known too little tenderness in his life, too many stolen kisses and bought caresses. His most recent wounds were already fading, but he still bore the scars of past battles, both won and lost.

A thin white knife scar bisected his right eyebrow, ebbing to insignificance dangerously near to his eye. A matching one marred his stubborn chin. His nose had been broken more than once. Esmerelda pondered it from all angles before deciding that she fancied it. It kept him from being too pretty, like Jasper. The harsh New Mexico sun had etched permanent creases around his mouth and eyes, but the tumble of his hair made him look younger than his years—boyish, yet every inch a man.

Caught off guard by a swell of tenderness, Esmerelda gave in to a temptation she had managed to resist ever since Bartholomew had grown old enough to roll his eyes, shove her hand away, and accuse her of mothering him. She reached over and gently brushed back the lock of hair that had fallen across Billy’s brow.

He came awake at the first touch of her fingertips, swinging the rifle around to point the barrel at her breast.

Esmerelda slowly raised both hands in the air, just as she’d seen his brothers do the night before. “Don’t shoot me. I surrender.”

Although she uttered the words in innocent fun, the intensity of his smoky gaze seemed to imbue them with another meaning altogether, leaving her to breathlessly wonder what it might be like to surrender to a man like him. To lay down her own carefully chosen weapons and trust her lips, her will, her very heart into his keeping.

Sanity came rushing back with her next uneven breath. She nodded toward the gun. “I surrendered without a struggle. Isn’t that your cue to put down the rifle?”

Billy lowered the gun and rubbed a hand over the thickening stubble on his jaw. “I ought to shoot you anyway. Didn’t your mama teach you never to sneak up on a man with a loaded gun?”

Esmerelda managed a shaky laugh. “She probably didn’t realize it was a social skill I would have need of. She was too intent on teaching me how to fold supper napkins, monogram handkerchiefs, and darn my father’s socks.”

Skills that had proved utterly useless once Esmerelda had been forced to accept that she would never have a husband or children of her own.

Discomfited at having revealed so much, she scowled at Billy. “Do you always wake up this grumpy?”

He swayed forward like a rattler poised to strike. “Wouldn’t you like to find out?”

Stiffening, Esmerelda swayed backward. “Perhaps grumpy was too kind a description. Insufferable might be more appropriate.”

He snorted. “You’d be insufferable, too, if you had to stay up half the night making sure my brothers didn’t roast Sadie on the spit.”

“You should have let them eat the mule.” He gave her a dark look before climbing to his feet. As he rolled back his shoulders to work the stiffness from them, his muscles strained against the worn fabric of his shirt. Raking a hand through his hair, he went to the edge of the bluff and stared out over the canyon with eyes that were red-rimmed from what Esmerelda suspected was too little sleep and too much strong drink. Desperation haunted his features, making him look even more dangerous and unpredictable than he had in the saloon where she had found him. A coarse oath and the aroma of brewing coffee drifted up from the canyon below, warning them that his brothers were already awake and stirring.

Esmerelda shuddered, chilled anew to remember the fate she had so narrowly escaped. Billy could growl and bluster all he wanted, but she knew very well that he hadn’t forfeited his sleep to protect Sadie. She gazed up at his inscrutable profile, overcome by sudden shyness.

“Mr. Darling?” In the crisp, clear light of day, she couldn’t quite bring herself to call him by his Christian name.

He swung around, reluctance plain in the stiff motion.

She forced herself to meet his eyes. “Thank you for looking after me last night.”

“Just doing my job, Duchess.” Although his voice was as mocking as ever, his eyes had lost their teasing sparkle. His level gaze made her skin prickle with a curious combination of apprehension and anticipation. “After all, that is what you’re going to be paying me for.”

Before she could break the strange spell his words had cast, a shrill wail shattered the tranquility of the morning. Sadie bounded to her feet and threw back her head, her baying only adding to the dreadful racket.

Billy’s eyes narrowed in bewilderment. “What the hell…?”

Esmerelda clapped her hands over her ears in a vain attempt to dull the piercing screech. “Sweet God in heaven, it sounds like they’re torturing a cat…” Her eyes widened in horror as comprehension dawned. “A cat!”

Her dismay shifting to fury, she snatched up the derringer from the folds of the blanket and went scrambling down the slope, leaving Billy to gape after her in stunned disbelief.

By the time Billy managed to shake off his shock and race down the slope with Sadie loping along behind him, Esmerelda was already holding the entire Darling gang at gunpoint.

They stood in a frozen tableau, caught red-handed rifling through the belongings in her overturned trunk. Jasper held an unstoppered scent bottle beneath his nose while Virgil clutched a pair of ruffled pantalettes to his burly chest, his face rapidly purpling from the cigar smoke he was afraid to exhale. Billy narrowed his eyes at the sight of Virgil’s meaty hands fondling Esmerelda’s drawers. His reluctance to stain the delicate fabric was the only thing that stopped him from drawing his own pistol and shooting his brother down in cold blood.

Esmerelda’s wrath was directed toward the man with her violin tucked beneath his quivering chin. He held the bow captive in his other hand, poised to assault the strings and evoke another of those piteous screeches for deliverance.

Esmerelda’s voice rang like a mission bell in the morning stillness. “Take your filthy hands off my mother’s violin.” She drew back the hammer of the derringer. “I’m not bluffing, Samuel Darling. Unhand that instrument or I’ll shoot you. I swear I will.”

Her target gulped hard enough to make his Adam’s apple bob in his skinny throat. “I ain’t Sam, m-m-a’am. I’m Enos.” He jabbed the bow toward the man buried up to his elbows in a pile of petticoats. “H-h-he’s Sam.”

Esmerelda’s gaze darted between the two men as she considered that revelation. “Then I’ll shoot the both of you.” Her eyes narrowed to menacing slits. “Or maybe I’ll just shoot off one of your ears, Enos, so no one else will be able to tell the two of you apart.”

Enos’s yellow teeth began to chatter. Billy could hardly blame his brothers for being cowed. With her cheeks flushed with rage and her hair whipping around her shoulders in a cinnamon froth, Esmerelda looked nothing like the meek captive he’d led them to believe she was. The regal sneer curling her lips was more suited to a queen than a duchess.

With an unexpected thrill of pride, Billy thought how pretty she was when she was riled. Nothing this side of Abilene rivaled the sight of Esmerelda Fine in a temper.

Virgil wheezed, puffing a stream of smoke out of his nostrils like a consumptive locomotive. Jasper’s free hand inched toward his gunbelt.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Billy drawled, folding his arms over his chest. “The little gal’s got a right twitchy trigger finger and a deadly aim. She almost shot me clean through the heart the first time we met, and us not even properly introduced.”

Esmerelda tossed him a startled look, but he couldn’t tell if she was surprised by his presence or his praise. He winked at her, rattling her composure enough to make the derringer waver.

Fortunately, Enos was already holding out the violin. “I didn’t mean no h-h-harm, ma’am. I’ve just always been right partial to fiddle music.”

Mollified by his polite surrender, Esmerelda laid the derringer in Billy’s outstretched hand and rescued the violin. Oblivious to his brothers’ hungry inspection of her shapely calves and trim ankles, she tenderly polished Enos’s greasy fingerprints off the rich wood with the ruffled hem of her petticoat.