The Duchess And The Desperado. Laurie Grant

sister, Kat—Kathryn, who will come out next year. I shouldn’t want to be constantly leaving them.”

      He hadn’t the faintest idea what “come out” meant, but he wasn’t sure it mattered. “This uncle of yours,” he said, nodding toward the closed door Lord Halston had disappeared behind, “he doesn’t mind that you’ve got the title? He doesn’t wish that it’d gone to him?”

      She looked amused again, and clapped her hand over her mouth as if to smother a very unduchesslike giggle. “Oh, actually he does, tremendously, but what can he do?” she asked in a lowered voice. “He can’t change the way the letters patent were written. But he is a marquess, and that’s just below me in rank, so he’s not too deprived.” She laughed again. “Mr. Calhoun, I find myself telling you the most shameless things....”

      He was just about to promise he wouldn’t breathe a word to anyone, thank her for inviting him and begin to take his leave, when he heard the door open from the corridor, and the balding, stoop-shouldered younger man Morgan had seen among the duchess’s party at the train station burst into the room.

      He was panting and red in the face. “Your grace! Oh, I—I didn’t know you were receiving, please pardon me! Th-there was a message left for you—”

      “Donald, you’re all out of breath!” Sarah Challoner observed. “What is it you’re so alarmed about?”

      “This, your grace!” he said, handing the duchess a folded piece of paper with her name on the back in bold block letters. “The desk clerk said it had been left for you when he’d stepped away from the desk for a moment, so he didn’t see who left it....”

      The duchess took the paper, unfolded it, and as she scanned the message, Morgan saw the blood drain from her face. Her hand shook and a moment later she dropped the piece of paper on the thick Turkey carpet.

      “Ma’am?”

      The duchess was staring straight ahead of her, her eyes wide and unseeing. She looked as if she might pass out in the next moment.

      “Ma’am?” Morgan repeated, uncertain as to what to do. His eyes sought Celia, but the servant was already at her mistress’s side, bringing a bottle of hartshorn out of her skirt pocket.

      Shuddering, the duchess turned around, waving the hartshorn and the hovering servant away.

      Finally Morgan just leaned over and picked the paper up from the carpet. He read the crude block letters: “PREPEAR TO DIE IF YEW DONT LEAVE NOW DUCHISS. YERS TROOLY, A PATRIOTT.”

      Chapter Four

      

      

      “Do you have any idea who might have written this?” Morgan asked in the direction of the duchess’s rigid back.

      Lord Halston came bustling back into the room from the adjoining one into which he’d been banished. “I demand to know what all the commotion was about! What have you done?” His eyes shot pale blue daggers at Morgan.

      The duchess, ignoring her uncle, looked over her shoulder at Morgan, her face tight and set. “No, of course I don’t know,” she said to Morgan.

      Morgan held out the note to Lord Halston, then watched the English lord’s face as he read it. The man’s eyes widened, then bulged. His face went a strange reddish purple and a vein bulged alarmingly in his temple. “This is an outrage!” he announced. “We must notify the authorities!”

      If the man was acting, he was damned good at it, Morgan thought, turning back to the duchess.

      “Are you sure, Duchess? Sure you don’t know anyone who has a bone to pick with you?”

      She gave a tremulous smile at the phrase, and murmured, “No, no one...certainly no one who writes like that. Whoever it is has a deplorable inability to spell and rather a lack of penmanship, wouldn’t you say?” she asked, with an unsuccessful attempt at a laugh.

      “You’re a duchess. You’re rich. You have everything a body could ever need. Are you sure there isn’t anyone who wants what you’ve got, Duchess?” Morgan persisted, glancing casually toward Lord Halston. The man had gone back to glaring at him.

      Duchess Sarah blinked once, twice. “I suppose anyone who is poor might be envious, Mr. Calhoun.... Or I suppose it could be some American who’s opposed to royalty and titles and all that—I’m aware there are some of your fellow countrymen who still feel that way. Is that what you meant?”

      He shook his head, wondering if the duchess was as naive about people as she sounded. She’d told him her uncle would have been duke but for her and her sister back home, after all.

      “Your grace, I believe you will now accept my earlier suggestion that we leave at once. You will see it is necessary,” Lord Halston said. “You could have been killed at the train station, and now there is this note! You must get home where you can be kept safe.”

      The noblewoman whirled toward her uncle, eyes flashing. “Run home to England with my tail tucked between my legs, uncle? I think not.”

      “But Sarah—”

      “No, my lord,” she said, her jaw set firmly, and Morgan was surprised to see that even a beautiful duchess could have a mulish streak. “I have not come thousands of miles to retreat,” she went on, “just when I’ve reached the land I’ve longed to see all my life. I will understand if you wish to return home, uncle—or you, Donald, or you, Celia,” she said, facing each of them in turn.

      Everyone was silent for a moment. Then Lord Halston said stiffly, “I trust I know my duty to your grace. As your uncle, it is my duty to guard you, to ensure your comforts, to see that all is properly—”

      She silenced him with an upraised hand, while her secretary and her dresser echoed their willingness to remain.

      Morgan cleared his throat, no longer so certain that the uncle was the one who intended her harm, but sure of one thing. “Ma‘am, it isn’t any of my business, but I think your uncle’s right. You ought to go home—maybe with a handful of men hired on to guard you till you get there, but you’d be a damn sight easier to protect in jolly ol’ England than here—beggin’ your pardon for my language,” he apologized, after he noticed Celia’s indignant face.

      “Don’t give it a thought,” Sarah said. “But Mr. Calhoun, you must think violence toward noblemen never takes place in England. I suppose he hasn’t heard of the princes in the Tower, or Henry the Eighth’s antics, has he, uncle?”

      Morgan was annoyed to feel left out as the duchess and her uncle shared a grim chuckle. “No, I don’t known anythin’ much about English history,” he admitted. “But it’s just so much less civilized out here. And you’re plannin’ on goin’ farther west? Lots of places, there’s hardly any law. And there’s Indians—and outlaws,” he added, inwardly amused, since he was one of them, “and so many places for them to hide. You’d need a small army to protect you. At least a cavalry regiment, and I don’t reckon the government’d be willing to provide you with one.”

      “No, they’re not. I’ve already made inquiries,” Lord Halston said, surprising Morgan and, from the duchess’s face, the duchess, too. “Please listen to him, niece. We should leave.”

      Morgan watched her square her shoulders and lift her chin. “I am not leaving, and that is final,” she told Lord Halston, who looked away and clenched his fists in a frustrated fashion.

      She looked at Morgan. “But I will accept your assessment that I need some extra protection here,” she said. “Would you be willing to accept a position as my bodyguard, Mr. Calhoun?”

      He felt as if he had a noose around his neck and the trapdoor had just fallen out from under him. A man whose face was on Wanted posters deliberately placing himself at the side of a rich, famous woman who would be the center of all eyes, wherever she went? Morgan suppressed an ironic laugh. True, he