Her Outlaw (12 page)

Unless…I went alone.
Emma’s pulse jumped. She drew a deep breath, stepped away from the desk, and paced the room, her thoughts spinning. Alone. Hmm. Could she? Dare she? After last night, she figured she could dare just about anything.

Actually, going alone would be better. Kat wasn’t as good a rider as Emma. She’d slow her down. Not to mention lecture her ears off. Ever since Rory Callahan did Kat wrong, she considered herself an expert on scoundrels. Because she’d tried to warn Emma about Dair, the I-warned-yous and I-told-you-sos would last all the way to Scotland. Besides, Emma didn’t really want her family to know about her lapse in judgement—her night with a thief. That would only compound her feeling of stupidity.

What a fool I was.
Thinking about it…recalling the boldness of her actions…her reaction to him. Her response to him. Emma closed her eyes. Humiliation flowed over her in waves. Fool! Fool! Fool! So she finally had an orgasm. Was it worth it? Was it worth losing her most prized possession? Not to mention her pride. And her self-respect.

How he must be laughing at her. The poor widow, so desperate for a man that she’d let a thief into her bed. Into her heart.

“No!” Emma’s spine snapped straight. Not her heart. Never that. She’d by God make sure the bastard knew it, too. She’d wrestle both her necklace and her self-respect back from the sorry scalawag, and her family—Kat—need never know.

Yes, going alone was looking better all the time.

I’ll do it.
Emma took a fresh sheet of stationery from the writing desk drawer and penned a note for her sister. Placing it in an envelope, she wrote Kat’s name on the front and propped it atop the desk where her sister would see it. Then, hurrying to her own suite of rooms, she quickly packed a bag.

Emma made one more stop before leaving the house. She spent a good ten minutes in the armament room, choosing her weapons. Last night Dair MacRae had showed her his talent with a sword.

Soon he’d see what a McBride Menace could do with a gun and a Bowie knife. She’d never let him know that he’d broken her heart.

C
HURCH BELLS CHIMED THREE
in the afternoon throughout Edinburgh as Hamish Campbell stood on the front steps of his town house and accepted delivery of the telegram. He tipped the messenger generously, then opened the envelope, read the contents, and smiled.

Well, well, well. Wasn’t this a surprise? He’d best get ready to welcome the boy home.

T
EN HOURS AFTER DEPARTING
Chatham Park, Emma stood in the shadows of a stand of trees keeping watch on the entrance to the Sleeping Dog Inn. An apt name, she decided, since this was where Jake Kimball’s stablemaster claimed Dair would spend the night.

After confirming his route to Edinburgh, she’d taken the train north to get ahead of him. The ride passed in a blur, partly because her mind had been occupied with plans and problems and regrets, but also because she had difficulty seeing through the excess of tears in her eyes.

Emma never actually cried. She was too proud to do that. No, the wetness in her eyes was due to wind rushing through the open windows of the rail car, or perhaps from an allergic reaction to a plant in bloom. Be damned if she’d cry over the likes of Dair MacRae.

She drew a deep, calming breath and noted the scent of rain upon the air. Great. That’s just what she needed to top off a simply horrid day.

She dared not leave her watch post. Though Jake Kimball’s employee had been certain of the coachman’s plans, Emma wanted visual confirmation before taking the next step in the scheme as it was rather labor intensive.

A raindrop smacked against her cheek and she stifled a groan, then moved beneath a leafier branch of the oak tree just as a coach pulled up into the yard. Awareness of any discomfort disappeared as her pulse sped up. Was it…? No. An elderly gentleman descended from the coach and tottered into the inn just as the skies opened up.

Lovely. Just lovely.

As rain seeped into her clothing, she reminded herself that she’d endured worse conditions during some of her McBride Menace escapades. A little rain wouldn’t hurt her. She wasn’t sugar. She wouldn’t melt. After all, true adventure often required a bit of discomfort, did it not? And she wanted adventure. Didn’t she? It was an itch in her blood. A need deep in her bones. Wasn’t it?

Or had this morning’s revelations in the wake of last night’s…activity…cured her of the desire?

“No,” she murmured. Her lust for life had been reborn and be hanged if she’d let Dair MacRae take that away from her.

In fact, she intended to have a good time dealing with the necklace thief. She’d indulge the remnants of her Menace-hood while achieving an adult’s victory. An adult’s revenge.

By God, she’d make the bastard pay.

Her spirits restored, Emma smiled as the rain continued to fall. When a second coach pulled up in front of the inn, she sensed that her prey had finally arrived. The door swung open and Dair MacRae stepped down…into a puddle of mud.

Emma allowed herself a little chuckle.

For a brief moment she was tempted to go after him here and now. She envisioned herself storming forward, treating him to a roundhouse punch, knocking him flat on his behind in the muddy yard. But that wouldn’t have the drama she’d been looking for, the humiliation factor she craved, so she resisted, watched him enter the inn, and planned.

“Until tomorrow, thief.”

Secure in the knowledge that Kimball’s stablemaster had indeed known Dair’s route, Emma retreated to the tidy cottage near the train depot and the room she’d rented earlier in the day. There she bathed, dressed in her nightgown, and crawled into a warm, dry, comfortable bed. She slept, and dreamed of retribution.

E
MMA AWOKE BEFORE DAWN
. As she pulled on her uniform for the day—a young man’s shirt, trousers and boots—excitement sang in Emma’s veins. It was really too bad that her sisters weren’t here with her. She so much would have enjoyed sharing the adventure with them.

Outside, she retrieved her rented horse and headed out. Dawn broke in a beautiful palate of mauve, purple and pink, and Emma laughed aloud with sheer joy, filled with the sense of her own power. She, Emma McBrideTate, was back. She’d teach that thieving scalawag to mess with a McBride Menace. Sometime within the next hour, she figured.

Taking up position on a hill some eight miles from town at the spot she’d prepared the previous day, she watched the countryside below. When she spied his coach climbing the winding road, she’d rolled the hired wagon into the middle of the road and destroyed its axle.

Dair’s coach had stopped exactly where she’d intended, and as she drew her weapon, again, Emma grinned.

D
AIR LAY SPRAWLED ACROSS THE
coach’s leather seats lost in a sea of pain. A herd of horses thundered across his brain, their steel shoes pounding his tender head mercilessly. He seriously considered instructing the driver to turn the coach around and return to the inn they’d left a short time ago.

He’d awakened with a headache this morning, but that was nothing new. It had eased after breakfast, and he’d felt fine as he boarded the coach and resumed his reading of the research books he’d brought from Chatham Park. Then, while reading about the history of the Kandabhar Ruby, pain struck with a speed and intensity beyond anything he’d previously experienced.

Was this it, then? Had his time run out? At the moment, he’d almost welcome death. How pitiful was that? He’d die a weakling curled up like an infant in a borrowed coach. He never thought he’d live to an old age, but he’d expected to meet his end in an honorably violent manner. Shot by a jealous husband or brought down by a lawman’s gun. Not killed by a damnable disease devouring him from within.

Dair heard the gunshot, and at first he thought his mind was playing tricks on him by conjuring up the violent end he’d anticipated. But when another shot sounded and the coach slowed, then stopped, he realized they were in reality under attack.

Despite the agony in his head, Dair smiled. Here was his chance, his opportunity to meet death on his own terms rather than wait for it to take him.

He thought of the orphanage with regret. He’d failed in his mission, but he’d put his faith in the letters he’d sent yesterday. He knew that the others—the three Texans who’d been like brothers to him—would step in to take up the slack.

He had a longer memory of his night with Emma. In his mind’s eye, he saw her lying in his bed, sated and sleeping. Now there was an image to take to one’s grave. The smile on his face widened as he reached for his gun.

As the coach rolled to a halt a voice rang out, “Stand and deliver.”

Stand and deliver? Dair snorted at the dated line. Who was out there, a century-old highwayman? More likely a fifteen-year-old boy, judging from the lack of depth to his voice. Probably lads on a dare. Foolish boys, he thought. With mischief like this, someone could end up dead.

From outside the coach, he heard horses neighing. The driver began cursing.

“Drop the gun!” cautioned a voice.

A familiar voice.

No. Surely not. The pain must be affecting his hearing.

“Driver, climb down. No, not this side. The other. Away from me.” Then, “You, in the coach. Throw out your weapons.”

It
was
her. Dair lurched forward, shoved open the door, and stuck his head and shoulders out of the coach.

She sat astride an animal more nag than horse. She wore a boy’s trousers and shirt, and she carried a Colt revolver in one hand and a Bowie knife in the other. In his pained fog, he recalled she was an excellent shot. Maybe she’d put him out of his misery. “Emma?”

Even as he spoke her name, his speed of forward motion caused the pressure in his head to explode into debilitating agony. Nausea swirled in Dair’s stomach. His eyes rolled back in his head, and his legs lost the ability to support him. He tumbled from the coach onto the ground.

The last thing he heard before losing himself in the pain was Emma Tate’s sigh of disgust. “Get up, MacRae. I haven’t shot you yet.”

T
HAT
’
S WHEN THINGS WENT
wrong. Climbing down from the sorry excuse of a horse she’d rented, she stared down at the man sprawled on the ground and nudged him with her boot. At least he was still breathing. “You weren’t supposed to fall down before I so much as touched you.”

Then she shot a glare toward the driver. “What’s wrong with him, Charlie?”

The cowering driver dragged his gaze off her Colt long enough to lower his hands and asked, “You know my name?”

“Yes.” She sighed in frustration, then lied, “Jake Kimball sent me.”

“To rob his own coach?”

“It’s a joke. What’s wrong with Mr. MacRae?”

“I don’t know, ma’am.” Charlie-the-driver shrugged. “He didn’t say much when he came out to meet me this morning. I did notice he was rubbing his head, though.”

Was he drunk? Emma leaned over him and sniffed. She smelled no sign of alcohol mixed in with his usual sandalwood scent. The appealing fragrance triggered a memory of the man rising naked above her, but Emma quickly shoved it away.

He groaned as she squatted down beside him and felt his forehead with the back of her hand. No fever. She tested the pulse in his neck. Steady and strong. “Was he ill yesterday?”

The driver shrugged. “He didn’t have much to say, ma’am. I can’t say I noticed anything peculiar.”

Emma frowned down at Dair for a moment, then touched his shoulder and tried to shake a response from him. He did let out another little groan which she found reassuring. She’d been around a lot of sickness over the years, but she’d never seen anything like this. She didn’t want him to die. Not until she had the chance to kill him, anyway.

“Well, first things first,” she murmured. Reaching out, she began to search his pockets. When her fingers brushed against a familiar gold chain, she smiled with satisfaction.

Emma pulled her necklace from Dair MacRae’s pocket, then slipped it over her head and around her neck, back where it belonged. Rising, she braced her hands on her hips, stared down at the prone man, and pondered her options.

She had her necklace back. She could just wash her hands of the sorry bounder and head back to Chatham Park. Back to Texas, for that matter. It’s what she should do, probably. He deserved no more. She should just climb back on her horse and ride on. Never mind that she’d be leaving him lying helpless and vulnerable in the middle of the road. He’d left her lying helpless and vulnerable, hadn’t he? Was the middle of the road a worse place for that to happen than his bed? Not from her point of view, it wasn’t.

And yet, Emma couldn’t quite find it in herself to kick the man when he was down. Either literally or figuratively. Exhaling a heavy sigh, she said, “Help me get him into the coach.”

The driver hemmed and hawed and backed away. “I don’t know, ma’am. What if he’s sick? I don’t wanna catch nothin’.”

Calmly, Emma reached for her gun belt and drew the Colt once again. Taking aim at the driver, she said, “Pick him up.”

“I thought this was just a joke.”

“Not anymore.”

Dair was deadweight as Emma and a visibly disgruntled Charlie struggled to lift him back into the coach. Emma wished she could direct the driver to take MacRae to the nearest physician while she went on about her business, but she didn’t dare trust the man at this point. She couldn’t trust any man, for that matter. Well, except for her father, her uncle. Mari’s Luke. Maybe her younger brothers. And they were all on the other side of the ocean.
Thank goodness.

Most infuriating of all, Emma realized she was worried to death about the blackguard. “Don’t you dare die on me, Dair MacRae. I want the pleasure of killing you myself.”

When she caught Charlie eyeing her rented horse speculatively, she snapped, “Don’t even think about it. You’re going to drive us back to the village to the physician’s office.”

“But that town doesn’t have a doctor. I’ve a lady friend who lives there, so that’s how I know. If you want a doctor, you’ll have to go all the way to the next town.”