Pale Moon Stalker (The Nymph Trilogy) (2 page)

"Why do you stay in a dump like this?" she could not help asking.

"Central location, close to Rosie's...oh, yes, and my friend Mort Hersh runs the place. He'll be along shortly, I rather imagine, so you'd better make this
conversation
quick," he said dryly.

"All right." She whipped off her hat and tossed it on the bed, then moved over to the door, holding her rifle on him as she turned the lock. "At least I'll have some warning before anyone intrudes."

"I could use some water," he said with a cough.

"After all that whiskey, I imagine you could. And probably a chamber pot as well," she said tartly. Filling the basin with brackish water, she turned suddenly and threw the contents into his very surprised face.

Max gasped and choked. Sky calmly looked on as he shook his head like a dog emerging from a river. "Now, you should be alert enough to comprehend what I have to say."

Max was indeed alert. He was also coldly furious. "Look, miss—"

"
Missus
...Mrs. Sky Brewster. I'm a widow."

"Well, Mrs. Brewster, I'm sorry for your loss—"

"I didn't come for condolences, Mr. Stanhope. I'm here to hire your skills with a gun. I want you to track down and kill the man who murdered my husband."

Max sighed. Damn, the woman had a head as thick as a brick. Best to hear her out, then get rid of her so he could collapse on the bed—that was if Hersh didn't arrive first. Rosie probably had Ben out looking for him now. One way or the other, he needed to lie down and sleep, preferably for about a week.

"Why should I be interested in taking this
employment
?" he asked, leaning back in his chair. "So far the only inducements you've offered have been indignities." He detected a faint flush in the widow's cheeks.

The Limey examined her carefully now that his head was starting to clear and she was fully visible in the light pouring like butterscotch from the room's lone window. Mrs. Brewster was one of the most stunningly beautiful women he had ever met. She was tall, with a mass of very long, glossy black hair done in a braid as thick as a man's wrist. Judging by the faintly dusky hue of her complexion, he would assume she had some native blood, but damn little.

Her features were cameo delicate, with a mouth that had slightly puffed lips as if swollen by kisses, a small straight nose, pointed chin and arched black eyebrows that framed the bluest eyes he'd ever seen. He'd been right about her body, too. It was slender with high, pert breasts that pushed against her loose shirt, and legs—lord, what legs—long and shapely in fitted buckskin breeches. She wore laced-up moccasins instead of boots. She also wore a gun belt strapped around those shapely hips and in the holster rested a Merwin & Hulbert, ivory-gripped revolver, likely a .38-caliber piece. This was one formidable female.

Sky watched his cool green eyes sweep over her, head to toe. Those eyes had seen a lot of death. "Do I pass muster?" she asked dryly.

He nodded. "I've always suspected beautiful women know they do."

"The same could be said of beautiful men," she snapped, then bit her tongue as his eyebrows rose slightly at the backhanded compliment.

Stanhope chuckled. "A beautiful bounty hunter? A most novel oxymoron. It even alliterates."

Sky bristled. "Let's focus on a not-so-novel idea—you killing a murderer."

"Look, Mrs. Brewster, if a man killed your husband, get the courts to try him. See him hanged. You shouldn't require my services."

"Unfortunately for both of us, I do. You can see I have mixed blood. I'm Ehanktonwon—Yankton Sioux. My husband was a missionary, an Episcopal priest who championed the rights of Indians. He was a thorn in the side of every sleazy Indian agent and local bureaucrat in the region. Are you so naive as to expect justice for a psalm-singing preacher who didn't understand 'all Injuns is semi-human, murderin' trash'?" she asked, emphasizing the last words with a nasal twang.

Max could hear the roughening in her voice and recognized that she was suppressing tears. She was right. Any white who took the natives' side, much less married a mixed blood, was fair game. "I've lived out West long enough to know how people here feel about the native population, but I don't go after men unless the law's on my side. I take it that the authorities don't agree that your husband was murdered."

"No," she said coldly, "they don't, and it isn't because I haven't tried to use the courts for the past year. It all began when Will and I were on the northern border of Yankton lands. We came across a man flogging a young girl with a riding quirt. God knows what that animal was doing there. I never did find out. My husband never carried a gun in his life, but he was a big man. He jumped off his horse and grabbed the quirt away from the little bastard."

She paused to compose herself, then continued. "The coward tried to pull his six-gun, but my husband grabbed it and tossed it away. Then he took the man by the scruff of his collar and used his own whip on him until he'd cut through the fellow's pants and blistered his ass." Sky swallowed, then said in a low, flat voice, "Will made two mistakes. He turned his back on the snake and he never let me carry my weapons. I could have stopped what happened next..."

Max finished for her. "This child-beater had a hideout gun? He shot your husband from behind?"

She nodded. "Then the girl he'd hurt started screaming. We...we both went for him barehanded, but he'd emptied his gun into Will, so he jumped on his horse and fled. The sheriff and the courts concluded it was self-defense," she said bitterly. "Even though everyone knew Will never owned a gun and he was shot in the back. The only ones to protest the verdict had the wrong color skin."

He looked at the Merwin & Hulbert .38 in her holster, then at the Winchester Yellow Boy. "Why don't you kill him yourself? You look capable enough."

Sky bit her lip. "Before he died...Will made me swear I wouldn't kill his murderer. He was a priest...and a far better Christian than I'll ever be."

"I assume he didn't specify that you could not hire it done?"

"I suppose, in a way, I'm still breaking my oath, but when I learned more about what kind of animal his murderer was, I couldn't let it rest. I want that killer dead."

Max sighed. "Hell, I'd like to help you, but there was a letter waiting for me when I returned this morning." He glanced over at the drawer beneath the washstand. "I have some very pressing business that must be resolved back in England. I truly am sorry, Mrs. Brewster. I hunt men, but I don't set out to kill them."

"I don't believe you'd have any qualms about killing this one—if you're the man called the Limey."

She seemed so sure of herself. "You know I am. But what would make me agree to your offer? Surely not your delightful interviewing skills," he could not resist adding.

Those huge blue eyes flashed triumphantly. "Several weeks ago, you were in a card game with a man, cleaned him out. He was a bad loser and tried to draw on you. You had him beat by a mile, but like a damned fool, you didn't squeeze the trigger. The man left the bar, got on his horse, rode sixty or seventy paces down the street, unbooted his rifle, and shot your horse, which was tied at the hitching rack. Shot him in the belly."

Max turned pale under his suntanned skin. "Johnny Deuce shot Rembrandt...my Remmy, the bravest, most intelligent, beautiful paint pony I ever saw. If he's the son of a bitch who killed your husband, you'll get what you want. Sooner or later our paths will cross again. I assure you that he'll be as dead as you could wish him."

Sky shook her head. "That's not good enough. I want him dead at my feet, and I want him dead now! I've already waited for over a year fighting for justice in courts that don't know the meaning of the word. I can pay you seven hundred dollars to do what both of us want. Kill Johnny Deuce."

Max stared at Sky intently while thinking about the news he had received that morning. A crazy idea flashed into his brain. Wildly improbable, but it just might work. She could be the solution to his dilemma...if he handled the matter deftly. The shock of learning about his uncle Harry's death had not yet worn off. Hell, it probably never would. That was why he had sought the oblivion of liquor. Harold Stanhope, Baron Ruxton, was the only family he had ever cared about...and now he was gone.

He absently gazed at the drawer in which he had placed the letter from his uncle's London solicitor. He had to return...and soon. "What if I make you a counterproposal?" His mouth curved ever so slightly at the double entendre only he understood.

One of Sky's finely arched black eyebrows rose. Heaven above, when the man smiled that way, she had no idea what to expect. "What kind of proposal?" she asked suspiciously.

"Why, of marriage, naturally," he said with a perfectly straight face.

Sky almost dropped her rifle. She did lean it in front of her, using the stock to support her suddenly unsteady legs. "How much
did
you have to drink?" was all she could manage to say.

"I am quite sober, thanks to you—and deadly serious, I assure you."

"Why would an Englishman want to marry a mixed-blood woman, much less one he's just met—and not under the most ideal circumstances, as you've repeatedly reminded me?"

He made a dismissive gesture with one elegant hand. "Back in England, your Sioux blood, what little there is of it, wouldn't signify. I have just come into an inheritance, but to claim all of it, I must present to my solicitor in London a suitable wife. The intent, I believe, is for me to wed and fertilize
a delicate English Rose
."

He spit out the phrase as if it were a slice of lemon. "But there may be another option...with no fertilization required. You're educated, Church of England, and to make it believable, attractive. You fit the requirements admirably," he added, amused at her stunned expression. She looked as if she had just seen George Armstrong Custer leap out of his grave, yanking arrows from his body.

"You're rather crudely proposing what I believe the English call a marriage of convenience. Is that right?" At his nod, she attempted to gather her wits, unable to believe such a bizarre bargain. "I assist you in claiming your inheritance and you kill Deuce for me in return?"

"Precisely so. We can have the marriage annulled once we return to America. Then I'll track down Deuce and—"

"No! First you kill him, then I marry you and sail to jolly old England," she countered stubbornly.

Max rubbed his burning eyes, cradling his head in his hands. This wasn't going to be easy.
She
wasn't going to be easy. "It can't work that way. It might take weeks, even months, to track him. I haven't the luxury of time. I have inherited my uncle's title, but if I don't return immediately, I'll lose his unentailed fortune. Worse, my gutless little bastard of a cousin will receive it in my stead. Cletus allowed my elder brother to die when we were children. If not for that...I doubt I'd go back."

"You don't want the money? The title?" she asked, amazed.

"I don't give a damn for any of it. I am not unlike what some would unflatteringly call a remittance man. My uncle has sent me money, which has been piling up in a New York bank for the past five years. Couldn't talk the old boy out of it, so..." He shrugged, then looked away, staring with those cold green eyes into a time and place far away.

"So, you let this money sit untouched and made your own way with a gun," she supplied. The man was an enigma. What would cause him to do such a thing? Sky intuited that it would not be wise to ask. Then he stood up and advanced a step toward her. Now he was grinning at her like a lobo wolf...a very dangerous male animal. She did not back away but stood her ground.

"That is one of the tools of my trade," he said, gesturing to the .45-70 Winchester in the corner. "By the by, that Smith & Wesson double-action you left basting in whiskey at Rosie's was custom-made to my precise specifications. If it's damaged, the cost of a replacement will come out of your share of the inheritance."

"I have not agreed to marry you—and if I did, it wouldn't be for money," she replied, caught off guard by his sudden shift in mood. "Anyway, it...it wouldn't be proper. Will's only been dead a little over a year."

"Do you want me to kill Deuce or not?" He studied her keenly, trying to gauge what lay behind those incredible eyes. Would she help him?

"Yes, I do, but if I go through with this sham marriage, will I have to accompany you to London?"

"I'll book adjoining staterooms. You may lock your doors against me," he said dryly.

Sky considered her options. With every passing week, Deuce's trail grew colder. She had learned he'd left Dakota Territory almost immediately after the last in a series of mock trials left him a free man. He was afraid of what she would do. Rightly so. "How could you find him months from now after we return from England?"

A good sign. She was not rejecting his terms outright. "It's what I do. Track wanted men," he replied simply.

She barely shook her head. "Why would you ask me to form this alliance? Surely you could find any number of women who'd give their eyeteeth to marry a titled Englishman."
One handsome as sin like you.

"I want the liaison to end amicably. What I don't want is a woman who covets being a baroness so much that she'll raise a fuss about an annulment. Your speech and manners—in spite of your rather unorthodox dress—indicate that you're well bred. I'm quite certain you do not want to remain my baroness. But can you act well enough to fool my solicitor, hmm?"