He’d left her with no choice but to deliberately misunderstand him. She stood, edging out of his reach. “You‘ absolutely right. I’m certain that my grandfather would consider Winstead’s offer a paltry sum compared to all riches he’ll be prepared to bestow upon the man who find his grandson.”

“Ah, yes. Your grandpappy. The duke.” Although Bill; expression was bland, Esmerelda sensed he was mocking her.

It made her want to catch him in a few exaggerations of his own. She narrowed her eyes at him. “According to your reputation, Mr. Darling, when you want somebody dead, they have a tendency to get that way. Yet you let my brother leave that bank alive. Even after he shot you.”

Her aim struck true. Scowling, Billy pointed a finger at her. “Before you go thinking that I never intended to kill him at all, you might as well know that there was a moment there in that bank, before I realized Bart really was your brother, when I just might have done it.”

“But you didn’t,” she replied softly. When he averted his eyes instead of answering, she shifted her gaze to the window. “Bartholomew’s still out there somewhere. And so is that crooked marshal who wants him dead.”

Billy nodded grimly. “As soon as I’m able, I intend to rectify that.”

“Yes, but who will you be working for? Me?” She hesitated for a beat, knowing she might be risking more than just her brother’s life. “Or Winstead?”

He gazed at her in stony silence for a moment before replying. “Your brother’s dealings with Winstead convinced me the Yankee bastard can’t be trusted. But as you were so kind to assure me back at that bank,” his voice melted into a drawl, making her feel all hot and silky inside, “you always pay your debts.”

Esmerelda saw reflected in his shuttered eyes the wanton kiss she’d pressed upon him in that desperate moment. So much for her hope that he’d been too delirious with shock and pain to remember her reckless promise. Irrationally furious at him for calling her bluff, she whirled around and started for the door.

“Duchess?”

“Yes?” She stiffly turned back, trying to decide whether to accept his apology or let him stew in his regrets for a while.

“You weren’t quite done with my bath, were you, honey?” Blinking innocently, Billy fished the washrag out of the basin and held it out to her. “I was kind of hoping you could take up where you left off.”

The frigid sweetness of Esmerelda’s smile should have warned him, but Billy was too mesmerized by her eager approach to pay attention to his tingling nape. “Why, you’re absolutely right, Mr. Darling. How thoughtless of me.” She picked up the basin, cradling it tenderly in her hands. “I forgot to rinse you off.”

Maidenly modesty be damned, Esmerelda whipped back the sheet and dumped the entire basin of cooling water in his lap. As she marched from the room, slamming the door behind her, Billy’s roar of outrage mingled with his howls of laughter.

“Just you wait! I’ll get you for that, gal! I swear I will!”‘ he shouted after her.

Esmerelda sagged against the door, smothering a helpless sob of laughter with her hand. “That’s just what I’m afraid of,” she whispered.

To Esmerelda’s relief, Billy seemed to have regained enough strength to bathe and feed himself. She peeked in on him later that afternoon to find his sheets draped over the windowsill to dry and Billy standing in front of a tarnished mirror, shaving himself with a bone-handled razor. Although he still had to flatten one hand against the wall to brace himself, the look he gave her in the mirror was potent enough to send her scurrying from the room.

That night Esmerelda slept wrapped in a quilt on the floor of the main room instead of in the rocker next to Billy’s bed. She awoke the next morning to the tantalizing aroma of rising biscuits and sizzling bacon. Her stomach growled with delight, heralding the triumphant return of her appetite. With the tattered quilt still wrapped around her nightgown, she stumbled toward the table.

She knuckled her bleary eyes only to discover to her amazement that it was Billy presiding over the cast-iron stove and Zoe hunkered down over the table. Sadie crouched at the woman’s feet, her big, brown eyes moist and hopeful.

Billy wore nothing but his trousers and a snowy-white bandage. The sight of the muscles rippling in his lean back as he flipped an egg with deft precision made Esmerelda’s mouth go dry with a thirst she feared wouldn’t be satisfied even if she drank the entire pitcher of frothy milk perched on the table.

As she watched, he slapped the egg on a plate, then slid the plate in front of his mother.

Zoe wrinkled her nose as if he’d spit in the biscuit batter and seasoned the bacon with a sprinkle of arsenic instead of pepper. She set the plate on the floor. Sadie shoved her nose into the feast, her tail thumping against the table leg in utter bliss.

Without missing a beat, Billy slid another plate in front of Esmerelda. Sunny yellow eggs, soft in the middle and perfectly browned around the edges, bacon fried into crispy curlicues, plump golden biscuits. She let out a blissful sigh. There had been mornings in her life when she would have sold her braid for such a feast. She flashed Billy a grateful smile, but he’d already turned back to the stove.

“Mornin‘, gal,” Zoe boomed in a voice that would have made even Virgil cringe.

Caught off guard, Esmerelda nearly choked on her biscuit. “G-g-good morning, Mrs. Darling.”

“Now, there’s no need in us bein‘ so formal ’round here.” Zoe reached across the table and gave her hand a maternal pat. “You can just call me Ma.”

Esmerelda gaped down at the massive brown paw that had engulfed her hand. It took her a dazed moment to realize that the woman wasn’t being kind to her because she’d been seized by a sudden fit of Christian charity, but to spite her son. From the wry twist of Billy’s lips as he set his own plate on the table and straddled the chair across from her, Esmerelda knew that he realized it, too.

Zoe’s smile was even more intimidating than her scowl. Before she could squeak out a reply, Esmerelda had to drain half a glass of milk to wash down the lump of biscuit still stuck in her throat. “That’s very generous of you, ma’am. My own mother died when I was only a little girl.”

Esmerelda tried not to cower as Zoe captured a corner of the quilt in her ham-handed fist and reached over to dab away Esmerelda’s milk mustache. “I’ve often wished I had me a daughter instead of a passel o‘ no-count sons. A daughter might marry someday, but she’ll always remain loyal to her ma.” Zoe shook her head in wistful regret. “Every woman should have a daughter. At least when a daughter has younguns of her own, she can understand the grievous pain her ma suffered through to birth and raise her.”

Thinking of Bartholomew, Esmerelda offered Billy’s mother a sad little smile. “Perhaps your suffering isn’t as unappreciated as you fear.”

Zoe cast the top of Billy’s head a black look. “My boys never ‘predated nothin’ they couldn’t eat, steal, or fu—”

Billy stopped shoveling in forkfuls of egg long enough to clear his throat and give his mother a level look.

She subsided with an audible “haarumph.” Esmerelda picked up her fork, tucking a wayward strand of hair behind her ear with her other hand.

“Hell, gal, there’s no need to eat with your hair all hangin‘ in your face that way.”

Before she could protest, Zoe had shuffled over to retrieve a faded ribbon from her sewing box. Esmerelda tensed as Zoe gathered her hair, expecting to be yanked bald, but the woman’s large hands were surprisingly gentle. As Zoe tied the ribbon in a clumsy bow at her nape, Esmerelda glanced up to see a flicker of something in Billy’s eyes.

“There now. Ain’t that nice?” Zoe said, stepping back to admire her handiwork.

“Why, thank you, ma’am, er, I mean Mrs… um,” Esmerelda had to clear her throat twice before managing to bleat, “Ma.”

Billy grinned and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “Since there’s no need in us being so formal around here, Mrs. Darling, can I call you Ma, too?”

Zoe scowled. Grabbing an ax off the wall, she went stomping out the door like some sort of Norse berserker in search of some hapless livestock to slay. Sadie loped after her, her long ears flapping in the morning breeze.

Billy returned to his breakfast as if the entire incident had never happened.

“Doesn’t it bother you?” Esmerelda asked. “To hear your mother speak so unkindly?”

“She’s entitled,” he said, biting off a chunk of biscuit and chewing with relish. “Besides, that’s the most I’ve heard her say in fourteen years.” He chased the biscuit with a gulp of milk. Esmerelda couldn’t help but notice how his tongue snaked out to lick away the froth of cream on his upper lip. “When I told her I was heading back to Missouri to join up with Bloody Bill and the rest of the boys, she didn’t say a word. Since I was the only one to come out to New Mexico with her to see her settled, I guess she’d taken it into her head that I’d be staying. When I walked out that door, she didn’t pitch a fit or even ask me not to go.” He shook his head ruefully. “I’d have felt better if she’d have hauled off and walloped me one. But I guess she’d done al the crying and begging she was going to do back in Missouri the night they hanged Pa.” He ducked his head to snap off a bite of bacon, but not before Esmerelda saw the shadow move through his eyes. “I never could abide; woman’s tears. I had to go after them. They made my ma cry.”

“You were there,” she breathed, stunned. “The nigh your father died.”

He gave a curt nod. “I wasn’t no more than a scrawny kid of thirteen, but I tried to stop them anyway. The soldiers held me back. By the time they left and I cut him down, it was too late.”

Such simple words. Such a vivid scene. Even with he: eyes squeezed shut, Esmerelda could still see it.

“I knew then that if I’d have had a gun in my hand, I could have stopped them. That’s when I vowed never to be without one again.”

Esmerelda could not let the icy glint in his eyes gc unchallenged. “If you’d have had a gun in your hand, they’d have probably shot you dead and your mother would have spent the past fourteen years mourning you as well as your father.”

“I reckon she did that anyway.” After a moment, he went on. “I can’t really blame her for taking my leaving sc hard. I was her last hope. She always dreamed of us boy making something better of ourselves than dirt farmer: or outlaws. Her favorite brother was a lawman back in Springfield.”

The keen attention Billy suddenly devoted to his breakfast betrayed more than he intended.

“She must have loved you very much,” Esmerelda said softly.

He flashed her a sheepish grin. “Jasper was right, you know. Ma always was partial to me. Hell, I’m lucky the boys didn’t toss me down a well and sell me to some passing Midianites.”

It was Esmerelda’s turn to blink innocently at him. “Now, Mr. Darling, where would a self-professed heathen such as yourself learn such a story?”

“Must have stumbled on it somewhere,” he mumbled, taking another hearty bite of biscuit.

Esmerelda knew exactly where he’d stumbled on it— between the cracked leather binding of that ancient family Bible. But if she pressed, she knew he would deny it. Just as he had denied owning all those books celebrating the courageous exploits of famous lawmen. Just as he would deny how natural that deputy U.S. marshal’s badge had looked in his hand.

“Ma used to save me the choicest morsels of everything she cooked.” He chuckled. “I used to plague her something fierce on baking day. She’d pretend to get all riled and shoo me out of the kitchen with her apron, but when I snuck back in, there’d be that bowl just sitting there unguarded on the table, waiting to be licked. Yeah,” he said softly. “She loved me.”

How could she not?

The thought rose unbidden to Esmerelda’s mind, ringing so clear that for a moment she was terrified she’d spoken it aloud.

How could Zoe Darling not love a sunny-haired child with a hunger for learning so sharp he risked humiliation and physical torment to satisfy it? How could she not love a slender, handsome boy clever enough to use his wits to survive the brutish bullying of his brothers? How could she not love a boy who’d seen and done things no boy should ever have to see or do, yet had grown into a man so tenderhearted that he hadn’t hesitated to champion a sad-eyed, flea-bitten basset hound whose hunting days were long over?

How could she not love him?

Time dwindled to nothing more significant than the dreamy waltz of dust motes around Billy’s head as Esmerelda realized that she was no longer talking about Zoe.