Devil's Dare. Laurie Grant

slap. Then they heard a girl’s voice—a familiar one to Mercy—cry out, “Now, stop that! Stop that right now, you hear me? Gentlemen do not behave that way!”

      “Charity?” Mercy started toward the sound, but not before she heard a man laugh and then say in an amused drawl, “Now, honey, jes’ what gave you the idea I was a gentleman? Now, settle down and give me some more o’ those sugar-sweet lips, sugar—”

      Devlin lunged forward at the man’s voice, and a second later Mercy saw him pulling a shorter man out of the shadows. “Let her go, Culhane,” he muttered.

      “Aw, boss, what d’ you mean, interruptin’ our spoonin’

      like that? I was makin’ out jes’ fine till you came along,” whined the cowboy, pushing back a few strands of tousled yellow hair from his forehead.

      “It didn’t sound like it,” Devlin retorted. “Sounded like you weren’t pleasin’ the lady a’tall. Miss, are you all right?” he called into the deep shadows that still hid the girl.

      “I…I th-think so,” came a quivery voice.

      “Charity!” Mercy cried as the younger girl emerged from the indistinct darkness, clutching the torn ends of her ripped bodice together.

      Mercy had only a second to stare at her sister’s disheveled hair, swollen lips and frightened face before Charity hurtled into her arms, weeping.

      “Hey, what’s goin’ on here?” the cowboy protested. “Me and the gal, we was jes’ havin’ some fun, boss, I swear it!”

      “Oh, Mercy, thank God! I’m so glad you camel” Charity cried against her. “Mercy, I was so afraid! That man, he was going to—he was gonna—”

      “Shh,” Mercy soothed her sister. “It’s all right, you’re safe now…” Over her sobbing sister’s head she stared at the two men, wondering what would happen next.

      “The girl wasn’t what you thought she was, Tom. She’s just fifteen. Now get on back to the Drover’s Cottage and call it a night,” Devlin commanded.

      “But boss—”

      “You made a mistake, Culhane,” growled Devlin. “Go on, now. You’re disturbin’ the ladies.”

      Culhane started moving, but he fired one last parting shot as he stumbled unsteadily past them. “Huh! She ain’t no lady—I guess I know a whore when I see one! She was kissin’ me real sweet till you came along…”

      “Culhane, shut up and get out of here!” Devlin snapped, and applied his boot to the cowboy’s backside to add emphasis.

      After watching the Texan banish his drover, Mercy busied herself with wrapping her shawl around Charity’s shoulders, covering her torn bodice. She shushed her sister’s tearful efforts to apologize. There’d be time for that later, but not now, not in front of Sam Houston Devlin, who had now turned back to them and was watching her with hooded, speculative eyes.

      “We can’t thank you enough, Mr. Devlin,” she said, trying not to betray the trembling she badly wanted to give in to herself. Charity might well have been raped if the Texan hadn’t found her then. And how had he known where to find her? She hoped there’d be time later to discover that, too. But for now all she wanted to do was to escape the Texan’s knowing gaze and get home and into bed before Papa noticed they were missing.

      “Sam, Miss Mercy. The name is Sam, and it was my pleasure to assist you,” he added in that rich, Southern drawl that poured like honey over her heart. “Is she—is she all right? I apologize for my drover’s crude behavior, ma’am. He’s just in off the trail and got a little liquored up tonight. He thought…he thought she was…” He hesitated.

      “A whore?” Mercy supplied, inwardly flinching at a word she’d never said out loud before. “No, she’s not. She’s just a foolish girl who didn’t know what she was getting into, I’m afraid. And now,” she concluded in brisk tones, “we must say good-night, and thank you again. Charity?” she prompted.

      Charity lifted her head from her sister’s breast. “Ththank you, Mr. Devlin…”

      They started to walk away, but Sam Devlin started after them. “I’ll escort you back to your rooms, Miss Mercy,” he informed her. “Wouldn’t want you to meet up with any more drunken cowboys on your way.”

      “That won’t be necessary,” Mercy said quickly. She sure didn’t want to take the chance of having Papa look out the window and see them with a stranger! Why, the clink-clink of his spurs might be just the sort of unfamiliar noise that was liable to wake their father. Then she realized how unfriendly she had sounded, and after Devlin had saved her sister from a fate worse than death, too!

      She paused. “That is, I appreciate your offer, Mr. Devlin, but we really don’t live far. Please, don’t let us trouble you any further…”

      She had forgotten about the Southern sense of chivalry. “Oh, it’s no trouble, Miss Mercy,” he assured her, that impudent grin back on his face.

      “No, really, Mr. Devlin—Sam,” she amended as she saw he was about to correct her. “I—I really don’t want you to. I need to speak to my sister—alone.”

      “Well, all right,” he said reluctantly. “Could I—could I just speak to you a moment, before you go?” He looked at her, then at Charity, and while Mercy was trying to find the words that would send him away, yet not rudely, Charity spoke up.

      “I’ll just stand over here, Mercy,” she said, pointing to a place a little way up the street. “Go ahead and listen to Mr. Devlin—it’s the least you can do after what he did for us.”

      Mercy was too surprised at her sister’s sudden return of composure to argue, and stood still as her sister walked out of earshot, yet where she could still easily be seen in the moonlight.

      A wandering night breeze kissed Mercy’s neck as she turned back to Devlin, and she was suddenly aware of her exposed neckline, now that Charity was wearing the paisley shawl. She sensed the Texan was aware of it, too, though she hadn’t actually caught him looking. But he gave her no time to worry about it.

      “I’m sorry the evenin’ turned out the way it did, Miss Mercy,” he said. “I’d like to ask you to supper.”

      “Oh, you don’t have to do that,” she said, looking away from the eyes that had gone gleaming black in the darkness. “There’s no need for any further ap—”

      “I’m not askin’ you ‘cause I want to apologize for Culhane,” he interrupted, smiling faintly down at her. “If you’ll remember rightly, I’d just asked you if you wanted a drink when we…when we were interrupted. I was intendin’ all along to work up to askin’ you to supper,” he finished with a boyish grin that made her knees suddenly feel like that jelly she’d made, the batch that had never quite jelled. Like water.

      Of course, there was no way she could say yes. Papa would lock her in her bedroom for a month before he’d ever let her spend five minutes in the company of a…a Texas cowboy! To him they were the same as Satan himself.

      “Please?” he appealed, actually having the nerve to take her hand and squeeze it a little. “I’d sure like to take you to the hotel and give you a nice supper, if only just to prove all Texans aren’t ravening wolves.”

      It was so near the image Papa had painted of them that she had to laugh. And all at once she realized that she very much wanted to go to supper with this Texan with the winning smile and wicked blue eyes. Just once…

      “All right, Mr. Devlin—Sam,” she heard herself saying. “I’d be pleased to have supper with you.”

       Chapter Five