The Duchess and the Desperado
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Laurie Grant
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Morgan Calhoun Was A Wanted Man. Morgan knew he would someday prove his innocence, but for now Sarah Challoner needed his protection, and he was determined to guard her with his life…even if it meant loosing both his freedom…and his heart! Sarah's lofty title had proven to be of little use in the rugged lawlessness of the American West, and when ex-rancher Morgan Calhoun offered her his help, she could only hope that her faith in the desperate man was not a mistake she would later regret!
Chapter 1
Malvern Hall,
Herefordshire, England,
1872
“I wish you wouldn’t go,” Sarah heard her sister, Kathryn, mutter as she watched Sarah selecting dresses from her wardrobe and directing the maids in their packing.
Sarah Challoner, Duchess of Malvern, looked over her shoulder at Kathryn and was touched. She thought her younger sibling looked wistful. She smiled. “Going to miss me, are you, Kat?”
Kathryn made a moue of disgust. “Don’t call me that. Thierry says it isn’t dignified.” She turned and gazed out the window that looked over the Malvern Hills in all their glory. “And yes, I am going to miss you. It sounds as if you’ll be gone forever.”
“I cannot call you Kat anymore?” Sarah said in mock dismay, struggling to hide her amusement. “But you have been my little sister Kat since you were born ! Ah...yes, Tilly, I believe I will take the blue foulard,” she said, pointing at a gown the maid held out for consideration.
“But not any longer, if you please,” said Kat with stiff dignity. “I shall be out next year, and Thierry say a nickname is not at all comme il fuut,” she added in an admirable French accent.
Sarah allowed herself to appear impressed. “I see. Well, if Thierry has decreed it, Kathryn it is, then.” Thierry says this, Thierry says that. She suspected her sister, who at seventeen was barely out of the schoolroom, had a bad case of hero worship for the dashing French count who was secretly Sarah’s fiancé. It probably wouldn’t be going too far to say she was infatuated with Thierry de Châtellerault.
Ah, well. That’s all right. She was just glad that Kathryn liked Thierry. It would be so awkward if her sister hated the man Sarah was going to marry. And it was perfectly normal for young girls to have these infatuations, after all. Sarah could remember a couple of her own-embarrassing, painful things they had been! Once she and Thierry returned from America as man and wife, though, Kathryn—Kat, she insisted to herself—would gradually learn to let go of her feelings and concentrate on finding her own special someone.
“Sure you wouldn’t like to change your mind and come with me?” Sarah inquired of her sister, who still had her back to her. “Wouldn’t you love to see America?”
“No,” came the uncompromising reply. “I can’t think I would enjoy racketing around the States in carriages and on trains, living out of suitcases for months on end! Besides,” she said, lowering her voice so that the servants wouldn’t hear, “once Thierry joins you in Santa Fe and you get marned, I shouldn’t like to be the gooseberry.”
“Gooseberry?” Sarah repeated, mystified. Kathryn was forever picking up servants’ cant.
Kathryn whirled around, her face sullen. “You know, the odd man out. I’d be superfluous.”
Sarah suddenly understood. She let go of the gown she was examining and rushed toward her sister. “Nonsense, dear...”
“But of course I would,” Kat cried. Her face was a study in disdain, her posture rigid, saying as clearly as if she shouted it that Sarah was not to embrace her. “I can’t think of anyone more useless on a honeymoon than one’s younger sister.”
Sarah stopped short and pushed her glasses back up on her nose. Perhaps she had been spending too much time with Thierry, and Kat was feeling left out. The girl’s wounded feelings were almost palpable.
“But it isn’t as though you’d be alone with just us, darling,” she said, low-voiced. “Uncle Frederick is coming along, and Donald, and Celia.... Think of all the sights we’d see, going from New York to California to Texas Just imagine, the Wild West!” If only she could infuse Kat with some of her enthusiasm!
Kat turned her back to Sarah once again. “Yes, but once you join Thierry, I can’t imagine anything more boring than spending time with our uncle and your secretary and your dresser while you’re off billing and cooing with him,” Kat said, her voice thick, as if she were fighting tears. “I’m not going, and that’s final. I just don’t understand why you have to go, Sarah.”
“If I were a man no one would question it,” Sarah observed. “Why should I not get to take a Grand Tour just as if I were a man? I’m duchess in my own right, after all, and I want to do it.”
“But men do their Grand Tour in Europe,” her sister noted.
Now it was Sarah’s turn to make a face. “We went to Paris with Papa, did we not, and on to Italy? The Continent doesn’t interest me. No, I want to see America—especially the vast open spaces of the West, Kat—ah, Kathryn. It must be so exciting to live there—not like tidy old England, with its manicured lawns and ponds, and quaint little towns several hundred years old. I need to see that before I settle down as ‘the duchess’—and as Thierry’s wife, as wonderful as I know that will be,” Sarah said. She willed Kat to face her, but Kat remained rigidly staring out the window. “And besides, it’ll give me a little breathing room away from Her Majesty’s incessant demand that I marry the boring Duke of Trenton, who’d be my equal in rank. Come, Kathryn, you must agree it’s delicious to imagine Victoria fuming when I return home married to the Count of Chatellerault instead?”
Kathryn slowly turned to face her, her lips reluctantly curving upward. “Yes...I can just imagine the queen wringing those plump hands. All right, I suppose you will go no matter what I say. But tell me—are you going to wear your glasses when you’re touring?”
Sarah breathed a sigh of relief that her efforts to mollify Kat had finally succeeded enough that she had turned to teasing. “Hmm...I suppose it depends if it’s just us—Uncle Frederick, Donald, Celia and I. You know how vain I am about being seen in my spectacles.”
Kat smirked. “I can just imagine—you’ll come back and we’ll ask what the most impressive sight was and you’ll wave your hand and say ‘I don’t know. It was all just a blur.”’
Sarah didn’t mind the sisterly taunt, for she’d always admitted vanity to be her worst failing.
“I’ll see you at dinner, Sarah,” Kat said, moving toward the door.
“All right, but where are you going in such a hurry?” Sarah asked, picking up the gown she’d discarded only moments ago. It wasn’t her favorite, but it would be good for traveling.
“Oh, Thierry said he’d take me riding while you were busy packing,” Kat murmured over her shoulder, her hand already on the door. “Since he won’t be meeting you in New Mexico right away, he’s rather at loose ends, too, you know.”
Sarah smiled and bade her sister enjoy herself. It was good of Thierry to keep Kat occupied, but perhaps she should speak to her fiancé later this evening and warn him that her younger sister had conceived a tendre for him. She knew she could count on Thierry to let Kat down easily.
