McCrory's Lady (50 page)

      
“Oh, Bart, I'm so sorry.”

      
“So am I, Megs—but it's your husband here who's got the final apology to make. Somehow, I think you'll want to hear it.” He took her hand and raised it to his lips for a brief salute, then looked at Colin with his shrewd ice blue eyes. “Take good care of her, McCrory.”

      
Giving Maggie a roguish wink, he turned and walked back toward the stage. She called after him, “Good-bye, Bart. I’ll never forget you, my friend.”

      
“I'll send your trunks to Tucson from the next relay station,” he called from the distance. The stage took off in a few moments with a loud crack of the driver's whip, groan of harness and pounding of hooves.

      
Colin and Maggie were left alone in the moonlight, standing in silence, facing each other.

      
“I don't deserve you, Maggie.” He touched a wayward curl, tucking it gently behind her ear as the night wind rose softly.

      
“Tell me the rest, Colin.” She knew he needed to release everything he had held bottled inside of him for so long. “A man who killed Apaches for bounty doesn't risk his life and career, everything he's spent years building, just to save the same people…yet you have.”

      
“You don't know, you can't even begin to imagine the blood, the stench of death...the flies. Those damn flies everywhere, crawling over the carnage. I thought after a couple of years I was growing numb to it all...dead inside like the Aussie. No,” he stopped, shaking his head. “Not like the Aussie. He relished the killing.”

      
“And you hated it.”

      
“I hated it, but the money was like a dream come true to a boy who grew up in the slums of Aberdeen.”

      
“What finally made you leave?” She read the haunted expression in his eyes and knew how difficult this was for him.

      
“We went deep into Chihuahua, down to the Durango border, chasing a big band of Chiricahuas. They were moving slow because they had women and children with them. It was easy to catch them.” Colin shivered, still seeing the vision that had haunted his nightmares for all these years. “Then, the slaughter began. I always tried to kill only the bucks—never women or children.” He laughed roughly. “Some code of honor, eh? In the last stages of the fighting I got separated from the rest of the men and two warriors jumped me. We fought and I killed them but I was cut up pretty bad. Took a blow to my head that stunned me.

      
“I was just sitting there on the ground beside the two dead Apaches when I heard the brush rustle behind me and this old man came out. He was really wizened, crippled with age, but the rifle he trained on me was steady enough. I was surprised when he started talking instead of just shooting me. By then, I knew their dialect well enough to understand what he wanted.

      
“He said he had lived his life. That the days of his people were numbered. That we—the whites—would win. Then, he called out a small girl—couldn't have been more than four or five. She climbed out of the brush and hugged his leg, afraid to look at me. He explained that she was stolen from a Mexican village in Chihuahua. His son had adopted her to take the place of a girl child he and his wife had lost in a Mexican raid. His son was dead now—so were all the others from this band. All but the little Mexican girl who he considered his granddaughter, the only family he had left. He begged me to save her life—to return her to Campargo. Me—a scalper who'd butchered hundreds of his kind. Yet he loved one of my kind so much he gave up his life for hers. One of the other scalpers shot him. Tried to shoot the child, too.”

      
“But you stopped him.”

      
“What does that make me—a hero?” he asked bitterly. “They were human beings, Maggie—just like you and me—like anyone. They hated but they loved, too. For the first time I came face to face with that.
They were human beings
.” His voice broke on the last sentence, every word enunciated like a litany. His eyes were shiny with tears.

      
“You've never told anyone this,” she said, reaching out to caress his cheek, this hard, solitary man she loved so dearly.

      
He took her hand in his and held onto it like a lifeline as he struggled for composure. “I've pushed that day to the back of my mind for almost twenty years. I learned too much about myself. I couldn't endure it. All I knew was I had to get out of there...”

      
“What happened to the old man's granddaughter?’’ She knew he had saved the child, or had given all he could in the effort.

      
“I took the little girl back to Campargo and found her white family. Left some of the gold I'd earned with them. I took the rest plus my profits from the last raid in horses and drove them to Arizona. You know the rest.”

      
“You worked very hard, became a rancher and built an empire. And you've done everything you could to atone for your past by becoming the Apaches' defender.”

      
“They keep their word when you make an agreement with them. It was only good business for a rancher to make peace back in the sixties when there was no army here for protection. I've been able to do precious little to help them.”

      
“Not for want of trying, Colin. You're a good man,” she said with passionate conviction, trying to shake him from his dark reverie now that he had cleansed away the poison he had kept locked inside for so many years.

      
“I'm just a rich hypocrite. An illiterate foreigner with blood on his hands. If I became respectable, it was only because...”

      
“Because you met Elizabeth?” she prompted, steeling herself. She had to know if his first wife's ghost would always stand between them. “She introduced you to a whole new world. You must've loved her very much.”

      
He was still mired in the ugliness of the past, but something in Maggie's voice stirred him. He looked up, meeting her pain-filled eyes. He found no condemnation, no contempt for his hypocrisy or the cruel and hateful way he had treated her. Rather, her eyes were filled with sadness and insecurity. “You're afraid of her.” The realization washed over him.

      
“I'm nothing like her. She was a lady. Yes, Colin, I'm afraid of her hold over you. She died fifteen years ago and you never chose to remarry.”

      
A wry smile touched his lips fleetingly. “But I did remarry.” He pulled her closer to him, struggling for the right words. “I always felt as if I didn't deserve Elizabeth because she was so pure and good.”

      
“What does that make me, Colin? Your penance? Do you deserve a whore because you were a scalper?” She could not keep the hurt from her voice.

      
He shook his head sadly. “No, Maggie. You're too good for me. From the first moment I saw you, I felt a fascination, a hunger—something I couldn't explain. I tried to rationalize my feelings away as simple lust, but I was lying to myself. I lied to you and I hurt you. I'm sorry. I do love you, Maggie.”

      
She should settle for that. Once she would have been thrilled to hear the words; but now, perversely, a part of her yearned for something more, something she did not even comprehend. “I love you, Colin. That was why I made my outrageous proposal to you in San Luís.”

      
He could sense her hesitation, so he plunged ahead. “What I feel for you is different than what I felt for Elizabeth.” She stiffened warily in his arms but remained still as he continued. “I was grateful to Elizabeth. I worshiped her—put her on a pedestal—but that isn't the way a man should feel about his woman. She was a good wife who did her duty...until she became pregnant and asked to be excused because of her delicate condition.”

      
Maggie could not imagine a virile man like Colin being celibate. Yet she could not imagine him betraying his wedding vows, either. “So you did as she asked.”

      
“Yes. It wasn't nearly as difficult to stay out of her bed when I was a randy young stud of twenty-three as it has been to stay out of yours now. That made me feel guilty and angry. I turned that anger on you, denying what I really felt. I burn for you, Maggie!”

      
A real marriage should have fire.
Eileen's words flashed into her mind. Lord knew, even when she and Colin had nothing else, they always had the fire. “And you won't ever feel guilty or be angry again?” She tipped her head up and stared into his whiskey gold eyes.

      
A crooked grin spread across his face once more and his eyes darkened with passion. “No, I won't feel guilty about loving you more than I did Elizabeth; but as to getting angry—woman, you make me crazy!”

      
His mouth came down on hers, tasting of smoke and desire, hot, seeking and joyous. She opened for him, clutching his broad shoulders, kneading her nails into his muscles, moaning low in her throat as she felt the answering rumble of his rough growl of possession.

      
They embraced fiercely in the moonlight for several moments, letting their bodies seal what their painful confessions had revealed. Slowly they broke apart, realizing they were out in the middle of nowhere, alone in the desert night. When Maggie looked into his eyes, her face was smeared with soot. With a tender smile he rubbed at it.

      
“I've marked you,” he said softly. “You're almost as filthy as I am, and I could sure use a bath. We'd better see about riding back to that relay station, but first there is one thing...”

      
He reached into his vest pocket and took out her ring. “I believe this belongs to you, wife,” he said softly as he slipped it on her finger. It glowed in the moonlight until he covered her hand in his and squeezed it. Maggie's face tilted up to his with tears shining in her eyes as she looked at his beloved features.

      
Her fingers gently skimmed over his sooty skin, then examined his singed clothes. “You've been hurt—burned, Colin. What happened to you?”

      
“Let's ride to the station. I'll tell you on the way.” He whistled for Sand, then swung onto the big buckskin and pulled her up in front of him.

      
She nestled in his arms, feeling cherished and at peace as she never before had in her life. As they rode, Colin briefly outlined what had happened to Eden and Wolf in the past several days, concluding with the final conflagration at Barker's mercantile.

      
“That whey-faced Edward Stanley was the man behind the Tucson Ring! Amazing. Poor old Sophie Stanley. I suppose Lucille Guessler will displace her as the reigning matriarch in Prescott society now.”

      
Colin grunted. “I'm a good deal more concerned with finding shelter for the night than with what that pack of harridans will do. Let them fight with nets and tridents for all I care.”

      
At the image of icy regal Sophie and plump fluttery Lucille embattled like Roman gladiators Maggie chuckled, then laughed.

      
Colin nuzzled her neck, whispering, “What's so amusing?”

      
She wiped tears of mirth from her eyes and whispered, “Nothing really. I'm just so happy, I'm giddy as a schoolgirl, I suppose.” She paused, then asked in a low voice, “Colin, do you suppose the beds in the station will be soft—or big enough?”

      
“Does it really matter?”

      
“No. Not at all.”

* * * *

      
The station was a sprawling adobe building with a traditional central courtyard. At one side the horses were stabled and at the other the kitchen and dining rooms for travelers were situated. Accommodations for overnight passengers and other wayfarers were simple, but Colin McCrory's name was known even in such an isolated place. Within an hour, they were in a spartanly furnished but clean room with a big tub of warm water emitting steam into the cool night air.

      
“Ladies first,” Colin said when the maid had closed the door, leaving them alone. He gestured to the big tub, but his eyes devoured her.

      
“There's plenty of room for two.” Her eyes mirrored his hunger as she walked slowly toward him.

      
“I'm filthy from the fire. I'll foul the water,” he said, his voice low and husky.

      
“I don't care. There's plenty more. Anyway, you may have burns that need tending. Ill have to inspect every inch of you to be certain you're all right.” She spoke slowly, wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue as she reached up to lay her hands on his chest. Deft fingers began to unfasten the buttons, gliding inside the frayed cotton cloth to caress the crisp silver-dusted dark chest hair.

      
His breath caught, and his heart began to race. “Maggie, Maggie,” he whispered as his hands held her face, studying its strong, lovely planes. His eyes traveled over every contour, the straight slim nose, wide China blue eyes with their thick auburn lashes, the high cheekbones and arched eyebrows. A patrician face, bespeaking generations of breeding. “You are so beautiful. I adore you, Mrs. McCrory.” The pads of his thumbs gently traced where his eyes had traveled.

      
Maggie closed her eyes for a moment in pure bliss as she leaned against him, feeling the warm, solid strength of her husband's body. His hands moved slowly lower, caressing her slender throat, then working the fastenings of her suit jacket. She helped him, quickly shrugging it off. While he unbuttoned her frilly blouse, she slid the tattered shirt from his shoulders.

      
When he slipped the blouse free and cupped her breasts through her lacy camisole, she arched against his hands, moaning softly as he seemed to weigh the incredibly sensitive globes. “Your body is lush, perfect. Don't ever lace it up in corsets,” he whispered.