This Fierce Splendor Read online

  The expression of stunned surprise on his face was superseded by ferocity. “The hell you have.” He started down the steps toward her, each word punctuated by the explosion of the firecrackers. “I don’t like women who use their sex as a shield to invade a man’s privacy and put him at a disadvantage. I don’t like it one bit.”

  “You said you wouldn’t see me. I had to do something to change the state of things.”

  “In case you didn’t hear me the first time, the answer is no.” His blue-gray eyes glinted fiercely through the smoke. “But you knew it would be no, didn’t you, Miss Elspeth MacGregor?”

  “Yes, but it appeared to be the only way to get you to take my offer seriously.”

  “Dom, what’s going on?” asked a lovely brown-haired woman clad in a blue lace peignoir from the top of the steps. Her gaze fell on Espeth’s prim, black-gowned figure at the bottom of the stairs. “Jesus, what’s happened?”

  “Nothing to concern you, Rina. Go on back to bed.” Dominic Delaney’s gaze never wavered from Elspeth. “I’ll take care of this.”

  There were other faces peering over the banisters now, but Elspeth was scarcely aware of them. All her attention was focused on the naked man coming down the stairs toward her. She was exquisitely conscious of everything about him. The sleek ripple of the muscles of his thighs, the way his chest moved in and out with each breath. His strange blue-gray eyes gazing at her with insolence and anger and something else …

  He stopped at the bottom step and stood there just looking at her in the duskiness of the hall. She couldn’t breathe. She dimly heard the firecrackers going off on the porch but they seemed far away. Everything seemed far away except the man standing before her effortlessly holding her gaze with his own.

  “Do you know that you’re in a whorehouse, Miss MacGregor?” His voice was silky soft, almost a murmur. “Women have only one reason for being in a whorehouse. They’re here to perform certain acts of pleasure, to entertain men.”

  His index finger reached out and slowly touched her cheek. She inhaled sharply. The skin seemed to burn under his touch. Ridiculous. It had to be her imagination.

  “Since you’re a woman, I have to assume you must be here for that purpose.” His hand wandered down to caress her throat, his thumb delicately testing the wild beating of her heart. “And I suddenly feel a need to be … entertained.”

  Elspeth found her breasts were heaving with every breath. He couldn’t mean … “No, you don’t understand. I truly meant to—”

  “Cut it out, Dom.” Patrick stepped out of the shadows. “Can’t you see you’re scaring the hell out of her?”

  “Am I?” Dominic’s hand was gently stroking Elspeth’s throat. He could feel it flutter beneath his palm. Her breath was coming in shallow little bursts. Her pink lips were slightly parted, and he could see the faintest glimpse of her tongue. He wondered what she would do if he leaned forward and parted those lips with his own tongue. “I thought you’d be around somewhere, Patrick. I’m sure you enjoyed the hell out of the show, but you really should have persuaded her not to do it. You might say I’m a little annoyed.”

  “More than a little.” Patrick eyed him warily. “But you’ve frightened her enough. She doesn’t know you’re only fooling.”

  Was he only trying to frighten her? Dominic wondered. That had been his intention when he had started, but now he wasn’t sure. His hand tightened on her slender neck. Touching Elspeth MacGregor was proving very unsettling. The flesh of his palm was tingling and he could feel a throbbing sensation begin in his groin. “Why don’t you leave the matter to be decided between, the two of us? Its time you got on your way to Killara.”

  “Let her go, Dom.” Patrick’s tone was hard. “I’m responsible for her being here. I can’t let you do it.”

  “Since when have you had any say about what I do?” Dominic’s hard gaze moved from Elspeth to Patrick’s face. What he saw there surprised him. Christ, the boy was serious. Next, he’d be pulling a gun on him to protect his little owl. A fresh surge of anger provoked by sheer frustration tore through him. It was a frustration that could be easily satisfied, he assured himself. Rina or one of the girls would give him more pleasure than this skinny little bespectacled gnome. But he didn’t want Rina or her girls, he realized in amazement. He wanted Elspeth MacGregor with a lust that was beginning to tear at his gut. It would go away, he told himself impatiently. As soon as she was out of his sight it would vanish as if it had never been. And the sooner that circumstance occurred, the better.

  His hand dropped from Elspeth’s throat. “You’re right, it’s time this stupidity ended. Here, hold this.” He threw Patrick the gunbelt he still carried in his hand. “And open the door.”

  With a relieved grin Patrick moved swiftly to obey. For a moment he hadn’t been sure Dominic would give Elspeth up without a struggle. Who the hell would have dreamed Dominic would become aroused by the little Scottish girl? And the fact that he had become aroused couldn’t have been more obvious since Dominic was naked as a jaybird. Patrick flung the door open with a flourish. “Yes, sir.”

  “Brat.” Dominic picked Elspeth up and slung her facedown over his shoulder.

  “Put me down!” Elspeth shouted. She could feel the play of muscles in his shoulders as they braced beneath her struggling weight. He was walking quickly, and with each step her lips touched the middle of his naked back. His arm was around her knees and she could feel the heat from his body even through the layers of her petticoats. Fear. It must be fear that was making her heart pound so frantically, she thought. They were on the porch and then going down the steps. She could see the people who’d been peering over the banisters now streaming down the stairs. “Let me go!”

  “I’m about to let you go.” She was sliding down the front of his body to land in a heap of black silk and a flurry of petticoats in the dirt of the street. She fought simply to gain a sitting position.

  Dominic Delaney was standing before her, legs astride, glaring down at her. “Now, let’s go over it once more, Miss MacGregor. You don’t exist for me. There are certain lines women don’t cross without suffering the consequences. You crossed one today and didn’t pay with more than a little indignity and dirt on your face. Next time you cross that line you won’t be so lucky.”

  He turned and walked toward the laughing crowd of people gawking at them from the front porch.

  She struggled to her knees and called after him, “I’m not giving up, you know. I’ll keep on until you listen to me.”

  He didn’t look back, and in a moment he had disappeared into the house.

  Patrick was suddenly beside her, leaning down to lift her to her feet. He took off his red bandanna and gently rubbed a smudge of dirt from her cheek. “He was right, you know. You got off lucky. In this country a lady is treated as a lady only as long as she obeys the rules. We don’t have as many rules as they do in other parts of the world, but the line he was talking about does exist.”

  “I’m not giving up.” There was a touch of desperation in her voice. “I’ll just have to think of something else.”

  “I didn’t think you’d give up.” Patrick sighed. “But do me a favor and stay out of Rina’s place while I’m gone. You owe me that much for calling down Dom’s wrath on my hapless head.”

  “Very well.” It was an easy promise to make. She had never felt more frightened and vulnerable in her life than the moment she stood there in that warm, scented dimness with Dominic Delaney’s fingers around her neck. “I won’t go back there again.”

  Patrick stuffed the bandanna in the back pocket of his pants. “Well, that’s something anyway. Come on, I’ll take you back to the hotel.”

  “You’re leaving town now?”

  “Pretty soon.” He’d have to stick around long enough to drop a few words into the right ears about Elspeth’s virginal purity and her peculiar ideas of female independence. Those explanations, along with threats of murder or immediate emasculation if any man bothered her
while he was at Killara, should offset the effect of any scandal Elspeth’s visit to Rina’s might bring down on her head. It probably would take him until noon to get the word around. That meant it would be late when he got to Killara tonight. Jesus, Gran-da was going to be wild. He took Elspeth’s elbow and quickened his steps toward the hotel. “On second thought, I’d better leave town pretty damn soon.”

  4

  She was there again.

  Dominic muttered a low and sincere curse. Rina glanced at him in surprise. Her gaze followed his and she chuckled at Elspeth’s black-clad feature across the street. “Do you think I should invite her in for a glass of lemonade? She looks hot standing out in that blazing sun.”

  “Very funny.” There was no amusement in Dominic’s voice. His hand clenched on the starched lace curtain of the parlor window. She did look hot. She was covered from the tips of her shiny black shoes to her chin in a black gown similar to the one she had worn when he’d first met her. There was a small-brimmed bonnet perched on her head, its ribbons tied in a neat bow beneath her chin. One gloved hand clutched the handle of a black parasol which may have afforded some relief from the direct rays of the sun but not from the afternoon heat, “How long has she been there this time?”

  “Since about ten o’clock this morning. Li Tong said she was standing across the street when he went down to the general store.” Rina was observing the small black-garbed woman with critical eyes. “God, that’s a terrible gown. She looks like a scarecrow. I’m glad she gives up when the sun goes down or she’d scare off some of my customers.” She cast a speculative glance at Dominic. “Lord, though, you do have to admire her persistence, don’t you?”

  “The hell I do.” Her persistence had been driving him insane for the last three days. His threat on the day Elspeth had invaded Rina’s place had not even dented her determination. The tone of her pursuit had merely changed from active aggression to passive inevitability. Everywhere he looked he saw Elspeth MacGregor. He had kept to his word not to speak to her, but it was becoming increasingly impossible to ignore her. Every day she had been standing in that very same spot across the street waiting patiently for him to appear. When he left Rina’s she trailed along behind him at a discreet distance. If he stopped at the barber shop, he could see her waiting outside. If he went to the livery stable to get his horse to go and check on one of his claims, she would smile politely as he rode out and settle herself on a bundle of hay to wait his return. When he went to the hotel for a meal, he could count on her being at the next table. She even trotted at his heels when he went to the Nugget every evening and stationed herself across the street.

  As Rina had remarked, her vigil ended when the sun went down but it might as well have lasted through the nights for all it cut down on the talk. Hell, he thought angrily, he was the object of amusement for the entire population of this damned little town. She was now slyly called Delaney’s “shadow.” The snickers behind his back were no less stinging than they would have been to his face. And the most maddening aspect of Elspeth MacGregor’s dogged pursuit was its passivity. He could take no action because she took no action. She was merely there.

  “She’ll give up soon and go away.” Rina slipped her arm through Dominic’s and leaned her head on his shoulder. “No woman can stand being ignored for very long.”

  Dominic wasn’t so sure. Elspeth MacGregor had displayed a strength of determination that surprised him. It had been a bold and unconventional move to place him in this position and, if he read her correctly, boldness and a disregard of the conventions were foreign to her. He knew very well he had frightened her that morning in the hall. Yet she persevered and, in spite of his annoyance and exasperation, he found himself reluctantly admiring her courage.

  Good God, if he continued in this vein, in another minute he would be feeling sorry for her, and that he refused to do. She was not only making him a laughingstock, but trying to force him into doing something he had no intention of doing. He’d be damned if he’d permit her to succeed in either. If she wanted a battle of wills, he would give it to her. He could hold out a hell of a lot longer than his so-called “shadow.”

  He would not feel sorry for her. She deserved her plight dammit, she’d brought it on herself. “One way or the other I’ll make sure she gets out of my hair—and soon.” He gave one last glance at Elspeth’s forlorn figure through the lacy veil of the curtains. She was standing very stiff, her back straight as a rod. Too stiff. He knew what that ironlike rigidity indicated. There had been times when he had been on the dodge he’d had to ride days without rest, periods when his physical strength had been stretched to the limit. It was during those times that he had ridden with a back as straight as Elspeth MacGregor’s was now. For he had known that to relax even a little would have been to collapse entirely.

  The heat was stiflingly hot here in the parlor. He could feel the sweat trickling down his spine. The rays of the burning sun must make the outside heat a hundred times worse, he reasoned. Elspeth looked infinitely fragile standing there with no protection but that blasted parasol. The shadow case by the parasol made the soft, fair skin of her neck appear terribly delicate. Her neck was delicate. He could suddenly feel again its silky yet vulnerable skin beneath his palm.

  “Christ,” he muttered through clenched teeth. What an idiot the woman was. It was a wonder she hadn’t collapsed already. “Goddammit, tell Li Tong to take one of the kitchen chairs and some water out to her.”

  He pulled away from Rina and strode swiftly out of the parlor.

  “Miss MacGregor.”

  Elspeth turned as she was about to go out the door to look back inquiringly. Mr. Judkins, the proprietor of the hotel, was gazing at her with a troubled expression. “Yes?” she inquired softly.

  “You shouldn’t ought to go out this time of night, ma’am.” He nibbled worriedly at his almost nonexistent lower lip. “Not alone. I’d be glad to get one of my boys to go with you.”

  She smiled gratefully at the small gray-haired man. Mr. Judkins had been very kind to her in the past few days. “I don’t think that will be necessary. I have no intention of being gone long.” Her smile widened. “Besides, I’ve been treated with the greatest courtesy by everyone in Hell’s Bluff since the moment I stepped off the stage. I’m beginning to believe the stories about wild western towns have been exaggerated. I felt more frightened in Edinburgh in broad daylight than I do going out after dark here.”

  “There’s more womenfolk in those big cities. I guess people get used to having them around and forget what it’s like to be without them,” Mr. Judkins said. “Ladies are precious as gold out here, and that’s how we treat them.”

  “Then there’s nothing at all to be concerned about, is there, Mr. Judkins?”

  He hesitated. “Ma’am, I’m not worried about anybody in his right senses bothering you. A man in these parts would know we’d string him up quick as a jackrabbit if he offered a lady like you any insult, but rotgut whiskey has a way of addling a man’s brain.”

  Elspeth felt a cold chill run through her, not at the implied danger but at the casual coldness of the man’s words. Hang a man for merely offering a drunken insult? No, he must be exaggerating to make her feel more secure. “I’ll be back soon,” she assured him once more. “I’m certain that if I have any trouble, there will be someone nearby who will be as kind as you are, Mr. Judkins.” She gave him another smile and closed the mahogany door behind her.

  Her footsteps sounded firm and confident on the rough wooden boards that formed the sidewalk. Her words to Mr. Judkins had rung with confidence too. How she wished she felt as confident as the sounds of her words and steps. Her palms were moist with nervousness beneath her cotton gloves, and she had a sudden urge to turn around and run back into the hotel and up the stairs to the safety of her room. She didn’t want to be out here alone.

  She had become very accustomed to the tiny town of Hell’s Bluff in the past few days, yet tonight this street appeared strange an
d unfamiliar in the darkness. The store and the bank on her side of the street were dark and she presumed deserted. The only establishment ablaze with lights and noise was the saloon on the corner across the street. The Nugget had a sign in huge red letters above its swinging oak doors, and no one could be more familiar than she with that sign. She had stood staring at it for three days in a row until dusk had fallen on the town. It had been a very important part of her plan for Dominic Delaney to know she was there and that he couldn’t escape her presence no matter where he chose to spend his time.

  But standing safely outside on the opposite side of the street and entering the rowdy brightly lit Nugget were two entirely different things. She knew Dominic might regard her appearance there as deliberate defiance of the warning he had given her. And there was no question in her mind that she must go into the Nugget tonight.

  She was growing desperate. No matter how chary she was with her small hoard of funds, they wouldn’t last for very much longer. She must at least persuade Dominic to talk to her. Surely he was softening just a little in his attitude. He had sent the Chinese boy with the chair and the water this afternoon. She was aware the small courtesy was far from a capitulation; it might represent a tiny yet significiant break in the wall of his resistance, however.

  But tonight she would be launching a further assault, invading another forbidden territory he regarded as his own. After tonight he would realize she would dare to go anywhere necessary to pursue him. Oh, merciful heavens, she was frightened, but it was a risk she simply had to take.

  She picked her way carefully across the hard-packed dirt of the street. Several horses were tied at the hitching rail in front of the Nugget, and she caught a pungent whiff of liniment and manure as she passed. She was closer now, and the laughter and conversation pouring from beyond those swinging doors was much louder. Suddenly she heard a cascade of words that caused her eyes to widen in surprised recognition. It had to be Ben Travis. No one but the stage driver had both that volume and that raucous a vocabulary.