Nobody's Darling

His voice was muffled by the bubble of fabric he sucked into his mouth with each panicked breath. “You must have mistaken me for someone else, ma’am. I ain’t never heard of this Bartholomew fellow. Now I suggest you step back before I’m forced to shoot you.” He crashed into the bank’s long counter, barely managing to steady himself with one hand.

Esmerelda tilted her head to study him. If memory served her, this wasn’t the first time she’d come face-to-face with the dastardly Black Bart. As a precocious four-year-old, her brother had delighted in tying one of their mama’s handkerchiefs over his pug nose in just such a manner. He would sneak up on Papa, poke him in the back with a wooden spoon, and demand all of his money. Pretending to quake with fear, Papa would empty his pockets of change, pouring the shiny coins into Bartholomew’s greedy little hands.

Emboldened by his success as a robber, Bartholomew had even taken to jumping out of darkened corners at Esmerelda. At least until the morning she’d swung around and boxed his ears between two books. He’d bawled at the top of his lungs for over an hour, earning Esmerelda a stern lecture from their parents. But the satisfaction had been well worth it.

A flare of anger burned away the tears in Esmerelda’s eyes, leaving them dry and aching. Suddenly she could see clearly. All too clearly.

Billy grabbed for her elbow, but she stalked forward, shaking off his grip. “Ain’t?” she bit off, her voice pitched dangerously low. “Ain’t, Bartholomew? Is that how I taught you to talk? Is that what you learned from studying thirteen years of grammar and elocution?”

“I knew a feller who was elocuted once,” Sam remarked.

He shook his head, sighing sadly. “I told him not to stand under that tree durin‘ a lightnin’ spell, but he jest wouldn’t listen.”

The other three masked men stood frozen, mesmerized by Esmerelda’s fearless pursuit of their leader. Bartholomew flattened one hand on the counter, but the bars of the teller cages prevented him from vaulting over it. Before he could devise a new plan for escape, Esmerelda grabbed the bandanna by its triangular fold and snatched it down.

A flabbergasted silence swept the bank, broken only by the muffled whimper of the forgotten woman in the corner.

Bartholomew hung his head. If it hadn’t been for the sinister beard shading his jaw, he would have looked exactly like the cherubic four-year-old whose ears she had boxed. She almost expected his plump lower lip to start quivering and tears to flood those big, dark eyes of his. It made her want to shake him and kiss him and smack him all at the same time.

She wagged a finger in his face instead. “Why, Bartholomew Ignatius Fine, I ought to turn you over my knee.”

“Ignatius?” his men chorused again. This time, one of them even had the temerity to giggle.

Jasper elbowed Virgil. “She can turn me over her knee any day of the week.”

One of the masked men eagerly raised his hand. "Or me!”

“How ‘bout me!” volunteered another. "I've been a very bad boy”

Holstering his pistol, Bartholomew shook his hair out of his eyes and fixed her with a smoldering glare. The phony drawl disappeared from his voice, leaving it clipped and sullen. “See what you’ve gone and done now, Esme.

Those men respected me. At least they did until you came along and spoiled everything. You never did want me to have any fun.“

“Fun?” Esmerelda choked out a disbelieving laugh, sweeping a hand toward the bank customers cowering in the floor. “Is this what you call fun? Terrorizing innocent citizens? Stealing the money they’ve worked for and sacrificed to save?”

He cocked his head back, as unrepentant as he’d been when she’d caught him gobbling lemon drops right out of the jar at the corner apothecary when he was nine. "I'm just doing research for my novel. A man’s got to live life before he can write about it.”

All the anger and hurt Esmerelda had hoarded in her heart over the past few months spilled into her eyes as fresh tears. “And I suppose it didn’t bother you that while you were out here living life, I was back home thinking you were dead.”

Genuine shame flickered across his face. “I’m truly sorry about that, Esme. I swear I am. I didn’t hire Snorton to hurt you, but to protect you.”

Esmerelda took a step backward, recoiling as if he’d slapped her. “You hired Snorton?” she whispered. “You hired that horrid little weasel?”

It was Bartholomew who stalked her now, stretching out his hands in supplication as she continued to back away from him. “You had to believe I was dead, Esme. It was the only way I could keep you safe. If you thought I was alive, I knew you’d take it into that obstinate head of yours to come out west and find me.”

Esmerelda stopped, standing her ground. “So you had Snorton swindle me out of the pittance I had left and deliver that overwrought account of your death?”

Bartholomew’s brow furrowed in a sulky frown. “Overwrought? That’s not very generous of you. I found it to be a very moving piece of fiction. I had to stop and dab my eyes more than once while I was writing it.”

Esmerelda heard a snort behind her that could have only come from Billy.

“You see, Esme,” Bartholomew continued. “I made a man very angry—a dangerous and powerful man. I deliberately let him believe that I was an only child. I was afraid if he found out I had a sister, he might try to use you against me or hurt you out of spite.”

“I doubt that he could have hurt me any more than you have,” she said stiffly.

Bartholomew’s words began to tumble out, propelled by his growing excitement. “Someday you’ll understand that I did what I did for the both of us. As soon as the fuss died down, I had every intention of contacting you with the wonderful news.” He clutched her shoulders, giving her the dimpled smile that had never failed to soften her heart when he was a little boy. “I’m a wealthy man now, sister. Wealthy enough to make sure that you never again have to scrimp or sacrifice or go hungry on my account. You won’t have to listen to those spoiled rich brats pound on the piano all day. You’ll be able to afford all the pretty gewgaws and ribbons you always deserved.” He captured one of the curls that had escaped from her bonnet, tenderly coiling it around his finger. “You’re not so old yet, Esme. If you fix yourself up with some powder and paint, you might even be able to snare some lonely widower and have some babies of your own to mother.”

A wave of humiliation broke over Esmerelda, flooding her cheeks with heat. She might have been able to endure it with more grace if she hadn’t known that Billy was back there somewhere, listening to the entire exchange. Did he find her as pathetic as her own brother did?

Before she even realized she was going to do it, her hand had crossed Bartholomew’s face, wiping the self-satisfied smirk from his mouth with enough force to make every man in that bank wince in commiseration.

He staggered backward, rubbing his cheek. His dark eyes brimmed with reproach. “Esme, how could you? You haven’t so much as swatted me on the bottom since Mama and Papa died.”

“I know. And I’m beginning to think I made a very grave mistake.”

They glowered at each other with simmering hostility. Esmerelda wasn’t even aware that Billy was circling them, studying the unconscious mirroring of their stances, the pugnacious jut of their jaws—a trait their mother had sworn they’d inherited from their pigheaded grandfather.

“Well, I will be damned,” Billy breathed. “You really are his sister, aren’t you?”

Esmerelda whirled on him, fighting hysteria. "Of course I’m his sister. Who did you think I was?”

As their gazes collided, she realized exactly who, and what, he had thought she was. It was there in the wariness shadowing his eyes, the raw tension curling his fingers into fists. It had been there in every exchange they’d shared, but she’d been too much of a fool to see it.