Outlaw (11 page)

"Yesterday?" asked the dowager.

"Please, I only want to get to Tucson and
get on with my business," Amelia said.

"Business?" echoed the plump lady, raising
her eyebrows.

Not again, Amelia thought in despair,
remembering her earlier stagecoach companions' reactions to her
status as a J.G. O'Malley & Sons book agent. If that episode
had taught her anything, it was that a stagecoach was not the place
for business discussions.

She adopted her most genteel manner,
lowering her head modestly as she grasped two handfuls of her
beleaguered pink Polonaise dress. Good upbringing will always show,
her father said. His conviction was about to be put to the test.
Raising her skirts slightly, Amelia dipped into a brief curtsy.

"Truly," she asked, "do I look as though I'd
cavort with a common criminal?"

Choked laughter came from the men's side of
the stagecoach.

It was silenced with one icy glance from the
dowager. Still seated, she raised her chin and, despite the fact
that her head came only as high as Amelia's waist, somehow
succeeded in looking down her nose at her. "
Cavort
, Miss
O'Malley?"

For an instant, she couldn't fathom what was
wrong. When it came to her, Amelia clapped her hand over her mouth.
Unfortunately, she was too late to recall what she'd said.

"Conspire! I meant, conspire—not cavort." A
hot blush climbed her cheeks. "I—"

"I think we've heard all we need to," said
Mr. Dowager.

"This has certainly enlivened our travels,"
remarked the man beside him. "It'll make quite the feature in my
newspaper this week."

"Your newspaper?" squeaked Amelia. She
imagined her name emblazoned on whatever western periodical he
spoke of, and felt a wave of nausea overtake her. Dear heaven,
please let this news remain here, she prayed. If word of a scandal
such as this reached her father back in the States, he'd disown her
for certain.

"Yes," the man said, examining her from
above his dark handlebar mustache. "John Clum,
Arizona
Citizen
—at your service, ma'am."

"Oh, no."

The plump lady examined Amelia with new
interest. "Imagine," she breathed, "a lady bandit!" Not unkindly,
she patted Amelia's hand.

Blindly, Amelia sank into her seat
again.

"Everything will be fine, dear," the lady
said soothingly. "I understand the justice of the peace in Tucson
has a kind heart toward females."

Amelia did not feel comforted. Glancing
toward Mason for reassurance, she spotted the one thing that had
the ability to make her feel worse than she already did. Winking at
her from a gap in the outlaw's shirt, a tiny bit of gold glinted
against Mason's bare chest. The chain was barely visible amidst the
tawny hair curling against his skin, but the item responsible for
setting off the whole embarrassing misunderstanding could be seen
plainly.

Her satchel key.

With a teasing lift of his eyebrows, Mason
grinned behind the gag. "Mmm—mmm?"

Chapter Seven

"I can't believe they locked me in here with
you!" Amelia cried, tossing Mason an accusing glance.

He sighed, leaning as far from her as the
chilly crisscrossed iron bars at his back would allow, watching as
she paced yet again across the length of their shared cell.

They'd made it as far as Maricopa Wells,
about eighty miles northwest of Tucson. Once there, their former
stagecoach companions had decided to rid themselves of the
troublemakers in their midst. The stationmaster had been only too
happy to lock up him and Amelia both, in return for the full bounty
he expected to receive.

"It's not so bad," Mason said, eyeing their
cramped adobe cell.

His attempt to offer comfort earned him a
dose of rolled-eyed exasperation from Miss Fancy Pants.

"For a prison," she shot back. "I don't
belong here."

Two days in their new accommodations had
only ripened Amelia's sense of outrage at being mistaken for
his...consort. Unfortunately, Mason was her sole target until the
law saw fit to move them to the jailhouse in Tucson.

He shrugged. "You're the one who jumped off
that stagecoach to go after me, Curly Top. You should've gotten
away from me when you still could. I reckon you implicated
yourself."

He ran his fingers along the iron bars above
his head, stretching the kinks from his back. "Besides, it's not a
prison, it's a stage station."

Amelia crossed her arms over her chest. Her
gaze followed his fingers' path. "It's got cell bars."

"You'd want cell bars, too, if you were
holding a pair of outlaws."

She cocked her head and raised her eyebrows.
Mason felt just ornery enough to ignore her unspoken complaint.

"I've seen worse," he finished blithely,
folding his arms and propping them behind his head for support. The
flat metal cell bars were wearing permanent dents into his skull.
He had to figure out a way to get out of there—and soon.

"You've seen worse? When?" she asked. "I
thought the poet bandit had never been caught."

Mason hesitated. "I told you—I'm not who you
think I am."

"Then who are you?" Amelia's eyes narrowed.
"Is your name even Mason at all?"

"I can't tell you any more now." He couldn't
risk it, not with so much still at stake. What if she revealed who
he really was? In the Territory, hanging was too good for a man
accused of murder.

The sheriff's wanted posters might have
reached this far north by now—it was only a matter of time before
he was recognized. He'd deal with that when it happened. But Mason
would be damned before handing over his name to a woman he couldn't
trust.

He might as well slide the noose over his
head himself as confide in a female.

"It's better if you don't know," he told
her.

"Hmmph." She straightened and flounced away
from him. "You're just mad because I'm your only captive who ever
escaped," she announced, examining her fingernails with a seeming
utter lack of interest in his reply.

"
Captive
?"

"That's right, captive. Prisoner,
hostage..."

"I know what the word means."

She smiled, fleetingly. "Call it what you
like," she told him with a carefree flutter of her fingers. "I
escaped through cunning and bravery, just like the heroine of a
novel—"

Mason tried to suppress a burst of laughter
and failed.

"—and it hurts your masculine pride to admit
it."

"I admit nothing."

Except that Curly Top was right about one
thing—the Maricopa Wells stage station was very much like a jail.
The place was well-fortified as a presidio, with thick outside
walls that squatted squarely around the inner buildings. Those
adobe walls served as well to keep prisoners in as they did to keep
hostile Indians out. Even if he managed to get out of the damned
cell, there'd still be the walls to overcome.

"Ha!" Amelia beamed triumphantly, as though
his silence meant he agreed with her. Pacing again, she amused
herself with some addle-headed talk about his masculine pride. All
of a sudden, though, Mason didn't have the gumption to spar with
her.

With a change of horses—and luck in stealing
a mount to begin with—the Maricopa Wells station was only two days'
ride north of Tucson. But it felt a hundred times as far.

Not knowing where the Sharpes had taken his
son had been bad enough. Knowing where Ben was and being wholly
unable to go to him was worse. He had to find a way to get out.

"And anyway, I'm no outlaw. It's as plain as
that," Amelia muttered, abandoning her attack on his manhood for a
fresh tour of their cell and a loudly hummed hymn.

Mason would swear the woman knew nothing but
church music. If they ever got out, he was sorely tempted to teach
her a saloon song or two. If folks had to be subjected to her
constant prattling, at least they deserved some variety.

She traveled past both metal cots, kicking
up puffs of dirt beneath her high-laced shoes as she went. Theirs
were rudimentary accommodations, at best, designed for temporarily
holding hostile Apache prisoners—or road agents like they were
assumed to be.

Curly Top had been allowed a bath and a
change into a borrowed blue-checked dress, but he'd been unshackled
only for meals. His wrists were already rubbed raw from the
bindings.

"And I'm not an outlaw's consort, either!"
Amelia added, darting a glance at him from beneath her bangs.

"I told them that," Mason told her,
shrugging. Keeping his back to the bars, he stretched his legs
along the hard metal cot. "They didn't believe me."

"Of course not!" She whirled on him, the
ruffled edge of her dress swinging fast as the change in her mood.
"I don't know why I ever believed you, either," she went on, her
mouth suddenly wobbling with suppressed tears. "I thought you were
a gentleman. I—I thought you'd never hurt anyone in your robberies,
so why was that man shooting at you? I trusted you, and now,
now..."

With a faint cry she pressed her knuckles to
her lips and turned away from him, leaving her words unfinished. A
moment later, faint sniffling reached him from her corner of their
cell. Her shoulders quivered beneath her too-large borrowed
dress.

Mason couldn't keep up. One minute she was
arguing with him like a drunk staring down the neck of his last
whiskey bottle, and the next she was blubbering like a little girl.
He didn't know how to help her, and he hated it.

"That kind of trusting can get you into
trouble, Curly Top."

She turned back, her eyes large and luminous
in the meager daylight that fought its way through the bars of
their cell's single window.

"You mean trusting
you
can get me
into trouble."

Silence filled the space between them.

Did he? Mason thought of Ellen's trust in
him, thought of his failure to reclaim his son, and couldn't reply.
One look at Amelia's straight-backed, defensive stance told him
more than her words ever could. She'd already lost whatever belief
in him she'd found. Now she feared him, too—feared the reprisal her
words would earn her.

Shaking off the doubt those words aroused,
Mason said the only thing he could think of that might protect her
from greater hurt later. "Trust me? I never said I was anything but
an outlaw," he replied harshly. "Forget what I am at your
peril."

She raised her head, tears turning her eyes
a brighter blue. "How could I forget," she asked, "when we're
locked up together in...in
here
?"

Her outflung arm took in their cell's rough
adobe walls, packed-earth floor, and crude black iron bars. Her
fist balled against her skirt, marking an uneven beat. "I—I just
never imagined—"

She was scared, he realized with some
amazement. In the time he'd known her, Amelia had seemed snooty,
bossy, sometimes foolish—and foolhardy—but never scared. Until
now.

"Come here." Mason swung his legs from the
cot, making a place for her, then levered himself into a sitting
position. He nodded toward the place beside him.

"No."

Amelia shook her head, appeared to
reconsider, then crossed her arms beneath her breasts decisively.
The motion pushed her breasts high and closer together, rounding
them beneath her borrowed dress in a way Mason couldn't help but
notice. He tried to focus on something else, and failed.

"No!" she said again, raising her chin
slightly. "Why would I want comfort from you anyway? It's your
fault I'm here in the first place."

Biting back the harsh reply that rose to his
lips, he gentled his tone instead. "If not for me, you wouldn't
know what that kind of comfort was like."

She started to reply, then snapped her mouth
closed.

"Come here, Amy," he said softly. "We're not
enemies."

Suddenly, the air felt charged around him.
All at once, the most important thing in the world was that she
come to him. He could protect her, dammit! She was a frightened
woman and he was a man, a man who could take care of her until they
got free. He only needed a chance to show her. Mason tamped down
his impatience, waiting as Amelia made her decision.

She moved a step closer. Warily, she glanced
up at him from beneath her eyelashes. He saw a tremor pass through
her, quick as lightning in a summer storm, and knew she was
deciding on more than a place to rest. Anticipation quickened his
heartbeat. He raised his hand to reassure her—and the chains
binding him clanked quietly against the metal cot.

Mason closed his eyes against the anger that
surged through him. Helpless! He was helpless as hell here, no good
to himself, or Amelia...or his child. Was Ben still in Tucson with
the Sharpe brothers, or had they moved on already?

He sensed warmth just in front of him, and
opened his eyes. Amelia stood there, only inches away. Her hand, so
much smaller and paler than his own, reached toward his shoulder as
though to comfort him. But when she saw Mason watching, she whipped
her hand back to her side.

"Why didn't you give me my key?"

He blinked. "What?"

"My key. The key to my satchel. I know you
have it."

At its mention, he felt the small weight of
it settled cold on the chain against his chest. "I couldn't."

Come closer
, he thought.
Trust
me
.

At the realization of his thoughts, Mason
leaned backward, stricken. Why should he want Amelia to trust him,
when he'd failed so many others in the past?

He didn't
.

"Why not?"

The key. Grinning without humor, he raised
his bound arms. "I meant, I couldn't give it to you—not like
this."

Her gaze fell to his wrists. With a poorly
stifled cry, she caught his raw, reddened wrists and cradled them
gently in her palms. The heat and scent of her skin flowed over
him, soothing him, warming him in ways Mason was sure she'd never
intended.