Mountain Laurel Read online

  Reluctantly, ’Ring let go of her arm and stepped back.

  Maddie walked around the table, and as she did so, the two men closed in beside her. The shorter man wasn’t much taller than she was, but even through his clothes one could see that he was all muscle, a couple of hundred pounds of it. As for the other man, not any human on earth—at least one who had any sense anyway—would have wanted to tangle with him.

  “Captain,” Maddie said slowly, giving him a little smile, “you were so busy telling me what you assumed I didn’t know that you didn’t bother asking me what precautions I had taken. Allow me to introduce my protectors.” She turned to the shorter man. “This is Frank. As you can see, Frank has been in a few pugilistic contests. He can shoot anything that moves. Besides that, he can play the piano and the flute.”

  She turned to the tall black man. “This is Sam. I guess I don’t have to tell you what Sam can do. He once won a wrestle with a bull. See the scar around his neck? Someone tried to hang him once, but the rope broke. No one’s tried again.”

  She looked at Captain Montgomery, saw his dark eyes glittering. “Behind you is Edith. Edith has a special affection for knives.” Maddie smiled. “And she isn’t bad with a fluting iron either.”

  She smiled even more broadly. It was a lovely feeling having beaten this pompous, know-it-all man. From the look of him she had an idea he wasn’t used to being bested at anything. “Now, you have my permission to return to your army fort and tell them I don’t need anyone to escort me. You can tell them that you’ve seen that I am in trustworthy hands. To save your conscience I will write a letter to General Yovington about Lieutenant Surrey’s untimely death and explain that while I appreciate his kind offer of an escort, I am not in need of one at this time.”

  She tried to stop herself but she couldn’t help gloating. “I especially don’t need someone as obviously clumsy as you. Frank knew two days ago that you were searching for us. Your inquiries weren’t exactly subtle, and all the time you were on the hill watching us, Sam was watching you. And when you were riding into camp…Heavens, Captain, the chorus of La Traviata makes less noise than you did. For the life of me I cannot understand why the army would choose a man like you to protect anyone.”

  She knew she should stop, but she didn’t seem able to. The way the dreadful man had called her a traveling singer was enough to make her pull out all the stops. “It seems that if the army was concerned for my safety from Indians, the least they could do is send me a man who could move about the world with a little more subtlety and a lot less noise. Tell me, Captain, have you ever been in the West before? Ever seen an Indian? Can you tell a Ute from a Crow from a Cheyenne? Or is trying to intimidate women what you do best? Is it, perhaps, the only thing you can do?”

  She gave him a sweet smile. Throughout her speech he’d just stood there, his handsome face a stone mask, his body rigid. She wouldn’t have known he was alive except for eyes that blazed with black fire.

  “You may return to your army now, Captain,” she said. “I’m done with you.”

  ’Ring looked from one man to the other, then at Maddie and gave a little pull to the brim of his hat. “Good evening, ma’am,” he said, then turned, walked around Edith, and went to his horse. A step behind him was Toby, who looked with some awe at Sam, then he winked at Maddie before he mounted his army-issue horse.

  They weren’t completely out of earshot before Maddie started laughing. Frank chuckled too, and even Sam smiled, but Edith didn’t.

  “He ain’t gonna like what you said to him,” Edith snapped.

  “I didn’t like what he said to me!”

  “Yeah, well, a woman was born to take whatever a man gives her, but a man ain’t used to it.”

  “Then I shall start a new trend of women not taking what a man offers,” she snapped, then calmed. “Oh well, it doesn’t matter, we’ve seen the last of him.” Sam made a movement, nodding his head toward the hill where the two men had sat, and watched them through a spyglass. “Yes,” Maddie said. “I think an extra watch tonight might be appropriate.”

  She turned away as Frank lit the lamps. She thought she might go to bed so that she could get an early start in the morning. She smiled again. So much for the army, she thought.

  “Scare her, huh?” Toby was saying as they sat around the campfire eating army hardtack. “That lady don’t seem like she’s scared of nothin’!” He chuckled in admiration. “I didn’t see either one of them men, didn’t even know they was there until they stepped out. Where do you think they was? That big one, I could believe he was in hell and just come up through the earth, but the other one—”

  “Could you keep your mouth shut for a few minutes?” ’Ring snapped.

  Toby didn’t have the least intention of being quiet. “She sure is a looker, ain’t she? You think a woman pretty as she is can sing?”

  ’Ring tossed out the dregs of his coffee. “No. If she’s a singer, I’m a liar.”

  “And you ain’t that, are you, boy?” Toby’s eyes were dancing. “You just told her the truth, that she didn’t know nothin’ about nothin’. ’Course you never asked her if she had a couple of plug-uglies to take care of her, you just told her. She sure didn’t like that, did she? Said you made more noise than…what was that?”

  “An opera,” ’Ring said loudly. “She mentioned the name of an opera. Don’t you have something else to do, old man, besides flap your jaws?”

  “Oooeee, I hope you don’t scare me as bad as you scared that little lady. Where you goin’?”

  ’Ring mounted his horse. “Don’t expect me back before morning.”

  Toby frowned. “I hope you ain’t plannin’ nothin’ stupid. That big one looks like he could break you in half.”

  “That’s more difficult than it seems.” ’Ring reined his horse away into the trees. When he was some distance away from Toby and away from the singer’s coach, he dismounted, removed his saddle bags, and pulled out everything. In the very bottom was a roll of leather and inside of the roll was a round tin box. He hadn’t looked at these objects for a couple of months, but he knew he needed them now.

  As he began to undress, his mind went back to the evening. It wasn’t the humiliation that bothered him, or even that he was humiliated by a woman, no, a man could stand words, but what bothered him was that she was getting in the way of an order. The army had given him an order, and no matter how much he didn’t want to carry out the order, he meant to do it no matter what was said to the contrary.

  So, she thought she was safe in this country, did she? She thought she was safe because she had two men watching over her. It was true ’Ring hadn’t been aware of the men skulking in the shadows of the coach—he accepted the blame for that—but when he had seen them, he hadn’t been intimidated. The short one, Frank, had a cloudy left eye. If he wasn’t blind on that side, he was close to it. With the black man, for all that his skin was tight and he appeared to be ageless, ’Ring detected a slight stiffness in his movements, and when he stood, he favored his right knee. It was his guess that the man was older than he looked and his right leg gave him a great deal of pain. As for the woman and her knives, he dismissed her. There was lust and longing in her eyes and he suspected he had merely to smile at her and she’d drop her knives.

  As for the singer, this LaReina, she was the most difficult to read. He thought he’d known her when he first saw her. She seemed soft and wide-eyed. She seemed as though she was listening to every word he said. She appeared to be a lady, what with her manners of offering Toby tea from her fine dishes. None of the officers’ wives would have offered a private, especially one who looked like Toby, so much as a smile. Yet this opera singer had.

  As ’Ring removed the last of his clothing, he knew that the woman did need an escort. Perhaps General Yovington had realized that and that’s why he’d asked for an army man. The choice of Lieutenant Surrey was an odd one, though. ’Ring remembered him as a quiet man who kept to himself. There wasn’t much els