Teresa Medeiros - Nobody’s Darling

Esmerelda sucked in a steadying breath, cringing when it caught in a squeak. She’d spent so many sleepless nights in the past few months dreaming of the moment when she would confront her brother’s murderer. But none of the possible scenarios had included engaging him in a standoff. Billy Darling was rumored to be a crack shot, lethally accurate at thirty yards, much less four feet. What was the proper etiquette in these situations? Should she suggest they choose seconds? Step outside and draw at twenty paces? She flexed her numb fingers, choking back a hysterical giggle.

Almost as if he’d read her mind, he said, “It has occurred to me, Miss Fine, that this may very well be your first gun-fight. We have both drawn our weapons so all that remains is to determine which one of us has the guts to pull the trigger. If you’d rather not find out, then I suggest you lay your gun on the table and back out of here. Nice and slow.”

“Now, William,” the sheriff whined. “You know you’ve never shot a woman before.”

Darling’s affable smile did not waver. “Nor has one ever given me cause to.”

“Drop your weapon, sir,” Esmerelda commanded, praying the derringer wouldn’t slip out of her sweat-dampened glove. She waited a respectable interval before adding a timid, “P-p-please.”

“I asked you first.”

Her hands were starting to shake in earnest, and there seemed to be little she could do to still them. The sight infused her with frustration and bone-deep weariness. She had sold everything she’d worked for since she was twelve years old—her beloved music school, her tidy little house with its red shutters and gardenia-filled window boxes, the precious books and sheets of music she’d bought with pennies hoarded from her own food money.

She’d forfeited all she held dear just to come to this godforsaken town and bring her brother’s killer to justice. And there he sat, smirking at her with cool aplomb, all the while knowing that he had crushed her brother’s life beneath his bootheel with no more concern than for a discarded cigar butt.

He had robbed her of everything that made her life worth living, and now he dared to threaten that life itself.

Esmerelda suddenly realized that she no longer wanted justice. She wanted vengeance. Her finger tightened on the trigger. A scalding tear trickled down her cheek, then another. She dashed them away with one hand, but fresh ones sprang into their place to blur her vision.

She did not see the sheriff rock back in his chair, grinning with relief. Billy Darling might be able to stand down the meanest desperado in five territories or gun down a fleeing outlaw without blinking an eye, but he never could abide a woman’s tears.

“Aw, hell, honey, don’t cry. I didn’t mean to scare you…”

Billy was out of his seat and halfway around the table, hand outstretched, when Esmerelda Fine, who had never so much as swatted a fly without a pang of regret, closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger.

When a lone man emerged from Miss Mellie’s Boardinghouse for Young Ladies of Good Reputation and sauntered across the dirt road later that afternoon, the crowd gathered outside the sheriffs office fell silent. Not one of them dared to protest. Not even when he strolled right past them and into the office just as pretty as you please, although the sheriff had threatened to blow off the head of the first man fool enough to stick it in the door.

The man found Sheriff Andrew McGuire reclining in an oak spindle chair, his feet propped on his desk. Both his boots and the tin star pinned to his satin vest had been buffed to a near-blinding shine. He had his nose buried in a book and was paying no more heed to the rumbling purr of the yellow cat napping on his chest than to the loaded shotgun laid across his lap. The cat had been a gift from Billy Darling, the shotgun a retirement present from the governor of Texas for surviving twenty-five years as a Texas Ranger—a survival ensured by his blatant distaste for danger.

“Afternoon, Drew,” the man drawled.

The sheriff leveled a glance over the top of the book. “Afternoon.”

His visitor jerked a thumb toward the door. “Quite a mob you have out there. You expecting a lynching?”

Drew rolled his eyes. “A cotillion, more likely.”

The man propped his hip on the edge of the desk and nodded toward the cat. “If Miss Kitty there is accounted for, then what might be the source of that godawful caterwauling?”

Although Drew appeared to be making a valiant effort, the sound was almost impossible to ignore. It wafted out from the corridor behind him where the back cell was located, not so much off-key as woefully shrill and set at just the right pitch to make even a long-suffering man grit his teeth in pain.

The wailing rose to a crescendo, making Drew wince. “It’s her. The lass has been praying and singing church hymns ever since she woke up from her swoon. She claims to be a music teacher.” When his companion’s eyebrows shot skyward in disbelief, he leaned forward and confided, “”The Battle Hymn of the Republic‘ seems to be a particular favorite of hers.“

The man’s jaw tightened. Drew knew damn well that every man who’d fought on the losing side in the War of Secession, or lost someone who had, despised that song above all others.

Drew chuckled. “The lass even had the audacity to ask if I had a copy of the Good Book on hand. I offered her this volume, but she declined.”

The man plucked the book from Drew’s hands and examined the cover, cocking a skeptical eyebrow. “The Amorous Adventures of Buxom Belle?”

Drew snatched it back. “Well, it’s a damn good book, if you ask me.”

His friend’s eyes were strangely thoughtful. “Has she shown any signs of remorse?”

The sheriff stroked the slinky curve of the cat’s back. Despite his grave tone, his own feline smirk revealed that he was enjoying himself more than was strictly proper. “She claims she’s resigned to suffering the earthly consequences for taking a man’s life, but insists the good Lord in his infinite mercy will surely pardon her for ridding the world of a heartless vermin like Billy Darling.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “The good Lord probably would. But I sure as hell won’t.”

A particularly grating note floated out from the corridor. Throwing a black scowl over his shoulder, Drew caressed the hammer of the shotgun. “One more chorus of ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’ and I’m going to have to shoot her. Or myself.”

The man reached across the desk to pluck a ring of iron keys from a hook on the wall. “Why don’t I spare you the trouble?”

Drew sprang to his feet, earning a sulky look from the displaced cat. He’d seen that wicked sparkle in his friend’s eyes before and knew it boded nothing but trouble. “Now, you wait just a minute there, lad. The woman might be prepared to meet her Maker, but she sure as hell isn’t prepared to meet you.”

The man neatly sidestepped him, the keys setting up a merry jingle as he headed for the shadowy corridor. “She should have thought of that before she came to Calamity. I intend to find out exactly why such a prissy little peahen would come gunning for the likes of Billy Darling.”

“If the lass screams,” Drew called after him, “I’m going to come a-running.”

The man tossed a grin over his shoulder. “And if I scream?”

Drew settled back into his chair, propping his boots on the desk and raising the book to shield his smile. “You, my friend, are on your own.”

As the final note of “Onward, Christian Soldiers” faded from her lips, Esmerelda clasped her hands and turned her eyes heavenward. She had hoped for some visible sign of God’s approval—a light streaming down from heaven, perhaps, or a chorus of celestial harping. But the plaster ceiling remained, its chipped and water-stained surface making her wonder how many other condemned murderers had sat on this very bunk, gazing wistfully toward a heaven they might never reach.

Rising from her aching knees to plop down on the bunk, she chafed her arms through the thin silk faille of her basque. Although the air was warm and dry, the short jacket that flared into graceful flounces over her bustle did little to protect her from the chill that had clung to her skin since she’d first awakened in this windowless cell. An awakening made all the more cruel in contrast to the dream she’d been having. A dream where she’d been cradled against the broad chest of a man who smelled of tobacco and leather. She’d wrapped her arms around his neck and nuzzled his throat, feeling safe for the first time since her parents had died.

Swallowing around the lump in her throat, she warbled the first few notes of “Amazing Grace.” But she got no further than the chorus before the melody died on a hoarse croak. It was just as she’d feared all along. She’d been singing less out of pious conviction than to drown out the voice of her conscience telling her she had done a terrible thing. A voice growing louder and more strident by the moment.

His eyes haunted her.

She couldn’t remember now if they’d been gray or green, which only made her feel worse. If you were going to take a man’s life, then you ought to at least be brave enough to look him in the eye while you did it. But she’d been the lowest sort of coward, closing her own eyes to blot out the dreadful finality of what she was doing. She supposed it wasn’t much better than shooting a man in the back.

She couldn’t remember the color of his eyes, but oddly enough, she could remember the exact texture of his eyelashes. They’d fringed his eyes like threads of gold silk, giving the dangerous planes of his face the disturbing illusion of vulnerability.

But it hadn’t been an illusion. Billy Darling had been as vulnerable as any mortal man to a woman with a gun in her hand. Now those extravagant lashes would forever rest on his pale, still cheeks.

Pressing a hand to her mouth to stifle a moan of shame, Esmerelda rose from the bunk and began to pace the cell. She’d already compounded her sin of murder by lying to the sheriff about her prospects for eternity. She wasn’t nearly as afraid of being hanged as she was of going to hell. The tin kerosene lamp suspended from a peg in the corridor outside the cell cast writhing shadows on the wall. From the corner of her eye, they looked like the flames of perdition licking at the bars of her cell.

The devil himself was probably chortling with delight at her predicament. Since her parents had died, she’d striven to be a paragon of Christian virtue her younger brother could emulate. And aside from the occasional uncharitable thought about her grandfather, she’d succeeded. Every naughty impulse and selfish desire had been ruthlessly squelched beneath the iron fist of duty.

A hysterical laugh welled from her throat, sounding more like a sob. Her steadfast devotion to virtue had all been in vain. Each time she’d bitten back a blasphemy when she’d scorched the biscuits. Each time she’d forced herself to hasten past a store window without pausing to covet the pearl-inlaid combs and pleated rosettes. Each time she’d given Bartholomew the last slice of bacon in the house when her own stomach was cramping with hunger.

Despite her years of unflinching self-denial, Satan was going to get his bony claws into her after all. And all because of some born sinner who’d probably spent every waking moment of his abbreviated life indulging his selfish desires.

Bitter regret flooded her, for all the delicious sins gone uncommitted and all the guilty pleasures she would never know.

“Damn you,” she whispered fiercely, clenching the cold iron bars of her cell. “Damn you straight to hell, Billy Darling.”

“Now that’s not a very charitable sentiment, ma’am, even for a woman who’s already done everything in her power to send me there herself.”

The laconic drawl came out of the darkness, a thousand times more damning than the voice of her conscience.

Esmerelda backed away from the bars as Lucifer himself emerged from the shadows wearing a butternut shirt, black vest, scuffed boots, and a pair of sinfully tight copper-riveted Levi’s. There didn’t appear to be so much as a scratch on him, proving that he was indeed Satan incarnate. Unless Old Nick, not content to wait for her arrival, had sent one of his most devoted emissaries to escort her to his unholy kingdom.

The wicked sparkle in his eyes made a mockery of his sympathetic frown. “Perhaps you should sit down, Miss Fine. You look like you just saw a ghost.”

Esmerelda had no choice but to obey. In her attempt to put as much distance between them as possible, she’d backed all the way to the bunk. Her knees buckled and she plopped down on the lumpy mattress.