Here Comes the Bride (23 page)

“You must be lost, woman. This here’s private property. You’re trespassin’.” He reined the piebald around so that they blocked her way. She noticed that the raw-boned gelding had one blue eye ringed in white, a feature she’d found linked to a nasty disposition in horses.

“Are you Mr. Steele?” she demanded with more courage than she felt. “I’ve important business with him.”

The cowboy scowled. “He expectin’ you?”

“Not exactly, but if you tell him that Mrs. MacGreggor is here, I know he’ll see me.”

“Nobody but Injuns and sodbusters walks out here, lady.” The horse bared his yellow teeth and chewed at the bit.

Tamsin caught the animal’s bridle by the headstall and ran an exploring hand over his neck. “Easy, easy boy,” she crooned. “There’s an infection here,” she said, glancing up at the rider. “It may be a splinter of wood or a thorn. You can feel the heat around the swelling. You’d best cut it out before it becomes serious.”

The cowboy’s eyes widened questioningly. “You think that’s what it is? I figured it for a bee sting.”

She shook her head and scratched under the piebald’s chin. The horse blew noisily through his lips but then visibly calmed under her touch. “I know horses.” She glanced toward the house. “I really need to talk with Mr. Steele.”

He shrugged. “Guess he can’t do no more than run you off Ma’am,” he added respectfully. She let go of the bridle. He tapped the horse’s rump with the end of the reins and continued on down the rutted lane.

Tamsin hadn’t gone another hundred feet before she heard the screaming whinny and the thud of iron-shod hooves against a barn wall. Dancer! She would recognize his angry bellow anywhere. And if her stallion was there, Fancy must be with him.

Tamsin broke into a run, but as she neared the stables, she saw several men repairing a railing on the corral. One turned to stare at her, and she slowed to a dignified walk.

“Hey!” the cowboy shouted.

She ignored him and turned toward the house. A black gelding, hitched to a piano-box buggy with yellow wheels, stood near the front porch. The animal’s sides where the mare went, the stud followed. Someone might have been tough enough to get him out of the barn, but they couldn’t stop him from going after his mate—not without killing him.

Tamsin took a deep breath and started down the road. Her belongings were heavy, but she had no intentions of leaving them behind. Once she got Fancy and Dancer back, she’d put Sweetwater behind her.

Tamsin guessed that she’d been walking for more than an hour when she reached the wooden gate with an oxbow suspended overhead. A large letter
S
, not upright but turned on its back, was burned into the weathered wood. Beneath the brand were the words
SAMUEL STEELE, LAZY S
.

Not certain of what she would find or what she would do if these people did have her missing animals, she backtracked a few hundred yards and hid her saddlebags in the bushes just off the road.

She was halfway up the lane to the sprawling log ranch house when a grizzled cowboy loped toward her on a black-and-white horse.

The man pulled in his mount, touching the brim of his slouch hat with a forefinger in greeting, but he didn’t smile. What she could see of his hair was sandy, streaked with gray. One cheek was covered with a purple birthmark. It was not a face to inspire confidence.

“You must be lost, woman. This here’s private property. You’re trespassin’.” He reined the piebald around so that they blocked her way. She noticed that the raw-boned gelding had one blue eye ringed in white, a feature she’d found linked to a nasty disposition in horses.

“Are you Mr. Steele?” she demanded with more courage than she felt. “I’ve important business with him.” were streaked with sweat, and foam dripped from his mouth.

Tamsin circled the horse and carriage, stepped over a sleeping cat, and climbed the steps to the front porch. The door stood open. From inside came the sound of a man’s swearing.

“It’s not what you think, Sam,” a woman pleaded. “Henry—”

“Henry’s my brother and you’re my wife! You’ve been whoring with him behind my back!”

Tamsin heard a second man’s voice, an older man. “I warn you, Sam. It isn’t like that. Don’t do anything you’ll regret!”

A woman’s scream was followed by the crack of a gunshot. Glass shattered and the woman began to sob. “No! No! No!”

Tamsin stood motionless, not sure if she should go inside or turn and run. Then the three burst through the door onto the porch.

The woman, a petite blonde in her mid-thirties, bore the imprint of a man’s hand across her cheek. Her eyes were swollen with tears, and her elaborately coiffured hair was disheveled. She clung to the arm of a muscular man with shoulder-length brown hair and a drooping mustache.

“Sam, please,” she begged. “It’s not true.”

Cursing, he backhanded his wife and drove a clenched fist into the belly of the man Tamsin supposed must be Henry.

The blow rocked the middle-aged gentleman in white shirt and waistcoat, and he doubled up, clutching his stomach. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

“Get the hell off my place, Henry! If I ever lay eyes on you again, I’ll blow you to hell! ”

Henry staggered back and steadied himself against a porch post. “Come with me, Sarah,” he urged. “It’s over. You don’t need to stay with him anymore.”

“I warn you, I’ll kill you.” Sam’s face darkened with rage. “I’ll kill the both of—”

“Not if I kill you first!” Henry flung back.

Then, for the first time, Sam caught sight of Tamsin. “Who are you?” he demanded. “What the hell are you doing on my spread?”

She blanched. “I’m Tamsin MacGreggor,” she managed. “And I’ve come for my horses. A mare and a stallion, thoroughbreds, stolen last night from the livery in Sweetwater.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Sam grated.

“Am I?” she dared. “Let’s take a look in your barn.”

Henry wiped the blood from his chin and stared at Tamsin. She caught a whiff of hair lotion from his too black, obviously dyed hair.

“I’ve got two thoroughbreds in my stable,” Sam admitted. “Bought and paid for from a dealer yesterday. I don’t know who the hell you are, woman, or what your game is. But if you’re calling me a horse thief, you belong in a madhouse.”

“No! They’re mine,” Tamsin insisted. “I bred them both, back in Tennessee. I—”

“Get the hell off the Lazy S,” Sam ordered. “Broom! Willy!”

The two cowboys, who’d been mending the fence, came on the run. A third man in a farrier’s apron followed, still carrying his hammer. “Yeah, boss?” the first man said.

“See these two off my land,” Sam ordered. “If they come back, you’re fired.”

“The judge, too?” The tall cowboy who had spoken first looked uncertain.

Sam nodded. “You heard me, Broom.” Sam seized his wife by the shoulders and pushed her roughly back inside the house.

“Keep your hands off her,” Henry said.

“She’s mine, brother. I’ll do with her as I please.”

Tamsin turned toward Henry. “If you’re a judge, you’ve got to help me.”

He scowled at her. “I’d advise you to get back where you came from. Accusing a man like Sam of stealing can get you in more trouble than you can imagine.”

The man Sam had called Broom held up his hands. “I’m havin’ no part of this, boss. You want Judge Henry throwed out of here, you do it yerself.”

“Damn you, Broom,” Sam snapped. “You can get off the Lazy S as well.”

The tall cowboy’s weathered tan flushed beet-red. “You can’t do that, Mr. Steele. I worked for your father since you were both mites. Who else is gonna hire me with my gimpy leg?”

“You heard me,” the rancher replied. “You haven’t been worth your keep in years. Get the hell off this spread.”

“Not without my pay,” Broom said. “I’m owed—”

“You’re owed shit. You don’t follow my orders, you’re fired!” Sam advanced on Tamsin with a clenched fist. “I warned you to git off the Lazy S, woman.”

She took a step backward. “I’m going.”

Broom took a swing at Sam, and the rancher hit him hard in the face. The cowboy got in a weak punch to Sam’s chest, but the younger man’s return blow caught him full on the nose. Blood spurted as Broom went down on one knee. Sam followed up with a vicious kick to the midsection.

Broom groaned and sank to the ground. “You bastard,” he managed. “I’ll get you for this,”

Sam kicked him once more before glancing at the second cowhand and the man with the hammer. Swiftly, they moved toward Henry.

Swearing, the judge retreated to his buggy. “You’ll regret this, Sam,” he warned. “I’ll be back, and we’ll settle this for once and all.”

Tamsin touched Henry’s arm. “I’m on foot,” she said. “Could you at least give me a ride back to town?”

He scowled at her. “Get back the same way you got here.” The judge slapped his lines over the horse’s rump and drove away without looking back.

Sam gave Tamsin a shove. “Get moving,” he warned.

She winced as she heard Dancer’s angry whinny from the barn. “I’m going,” she repeated. But I’ll be back, too, she vowed silently. You can count on it.

Read on for an excerpt from Katie Rose’s

A Case for Romance

The World’s Second Consulting Detective

Colorado, April 1, 1894

Emily Potter closed the dog-eared copy of the
Strand
amid the rumbling of the stagecoach, and sank back into the seat with a smile of satisfaction. Along with Holmes, she, too, had figured out the mystery long before everyone else, but it was enjoyable just watching the story play itself out. Her reading glasses slid down her nose, and she pushed them back into place, ignoring the odd glances she received from the other stagecoach passengers. Besides herself, there were two women, a businessman, a cowboy who smelled suspiciously of whiskey, and a preacher. Although it couldn’t possibly matter, Emily noticed that the preacher was undeniably handsome, with piercing blue eyes and indecently long lashes. He seemed preoccupied with the landscape that whizzed by the coach window. Putting the book aside, she felt the familiar surge of disappointment that the tale was over Emily sighed. She hated that her active mind no longer had anything to occupy it. Like her great-aunt Esther, who painted nudes and was admittedly the family eccentric, Emily simply marched to a different tune than most women. Give her a puzzle, a problem, the most intricate enigma or most obscure crime, and she was in her element. From her earliest memories, she had been obsessed with mysteries, devouring them like candy as she helped her mother in the millinery business. While other girls shopped, went to dances, called on each other and gossiped, Emily read every kind of mystery she could find. She knew all of Poe, memorized Doyle, despised Gaboriau, and adored Vidocq. When that wasn’t enough, she alarmed her mother by voraciously following the daily papers, marking the local murders in ink and poring over the details of each case. She often gave the police information about the crimes, even though they dismissed her help with fatherly smiles. Yet Emily never doubted that she would one day convince them of her methods and win their respect.

But Emily had just turned sixteen when her mother died, and thereafter she had less free time to track the activities of the criminal element. The millinery shop was still successful, so Emily continued the business, propping her beloved books between hats and feeding her habit secondhand. The books almost sufficed, but were never really enough. She longed to be like Holmes, to awaken her counterpart in the middle of the night and whisper, “Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot!”

A rustle came from the bag on the floor of the stagecoach, disturbing her thoughts. Reaching down, Emily’s glasses slid to the tip of her sharp nose as she scooped inside the bag to pull out a black-and-white cat. Dr. Watson mewed contentedly, although he was tangled up in laces and yarn, thread, and artificial cherries.

“Silly cat.” Emily smiled fondly, disentangling the feline. Fascinated with the mess, the cat swiped at the dangling threads, ignoring his mistress’s attempts to remove them. Much of the millinery business was easily transportable, everything fitting neatly into her bag, but trimmings didn’t necessarily mix well with a cat. Yet Emily wouldn’t dream of going anywhere without her precious feline.