Nobody's Darling

He gave her a smoldering look that warned her he hadn’t forgotten a single touch or kiss they’d shared during that fateful night.

As much as Esmerelda hated to admit it, he was right. She was already the laughingstock of London. Struggle or flight would only humiliate her further. When Billy drew her out of the bow, she wore a smile as dazzling as his own.

Drew tugged a handkerchief from his breast pocket and mopped his brow before returning the megaphone to his lips. “Mr. Darling has traveled all the way from the wilds of America to provide you with an exhibition of crack shooting the likes of which has never before been seen in your fair country.”

The bald cowboy who had portrayed the stagecoach driver came trotting out from behind a curtain, wheeling a silver tea cart. Four men with colorful bandannas tied across their noses mounted their horses and went galloping around the arena. They distracted the impatient audience by whooping a deafening chorus of rebel yells and firing their pistols in the air.

Virgil winked at Esmerelda as he raced past, looking much more natural in his outlaw’s getup than he had in a bonnet and homespun dress.

Billy shook his head. “I sure hope they remembered to replace their shells with blanks.”

“If not,” she murmured, “several of the English stand to inherit before this night is over.”

As the tea cart drew near, Esmerelda saw that it bore a crystal cup laden with dimes, a shiny new deck of playing cards, and a sleek Colt.45. Realizing immediately that it would have to be loaded with live shells instead of blanks, she grabbed for the gun.

Billy swept it out of her reach with effortless grace, tsking beneath his breath as he slid it into his holster. She glared at him.

No doubt fearing they were about to break into fisticuffs, Sheriff McGuire hastily lifted the megaphone. “With the lady’s gracious help, Mr. Darling will now favor us all with a demonstration of his prowess.”

The image that popped into Esmerelda’s head was so unprecedented and so utterly ribald that she blushed to the roots of her hair.

Billy held out a single dime, his lazy grin warning her that he had read her thoughts. “If you would be so kind…?”

Resisting an urge to fling the coin in his smirking face, she hurled it toward the ceiling with all of her might.

The shimmering coin flipped end over end, disappearing into the glare of the spotlights. With one smooth motion, Billy drew, cocked the hammer of his pistol with the palm of his other hand, and fired. The dime shot heavenward, propelled by the impact.

The appreciative “oohs” and “aahs” of Billy’s rapt audience grew in volume each time they repeated the trick. He never once missed the impossibly elusive target, not even when he backed up to a distance of ninety feet.

Hoping to thwart him, Esmerelda grabbed an entire handful of dimes and tossed them into the air. Billy fired six shots in dizzying succession, taking down six of them before they could reach the ground.

The applause was deafening.

As he strode back to her side to take his triumphant bow, the spotlight dimmed to an unearthly glow.

Drew took advantage of the audience’s breathless anticipation. “Mr. Darling’s next trick requires absolute silence. I can only urge you to make no careless gesture, to speak no word that would disturb his concentration.” He lowered his voice to an ominous stage whisper. “The very life of the lady may depend upon it.”

Esmerelda was less than heartened by that dire prediction. Billy took up the deck of cards and held them out to her, fanning them in a gesture he could have only perfected during countless poker games. He stood so near to her that Esmerelda was mesmerized by the dark gold threads of his lashes, the wary deepening of the lines that bracketed his sensual mouth.

Drew pointed the megaphone at her ear and intoned, “As he must draw, so must she.”

Willing herself not to tremble, Esmerelda reached out and chose a card. She glanced at it, then turned it for Billy to see, unable to resist a mocking smile.

“The queen of hearts!” Drew called out. The audience shifted and murmured in subdued delight.

Billy strolled behind her. Esmerelda forced herself to remain pliant while he slid one arm around her waist and positioned her like some dressmaker’s dummy. She refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing that his touch could still make her pulse quicken and her mouth go dry with longing.

But she could do nothing to hide the ripple of goose-flesh that danced along her skin when he pressed his mouth to her ear and whispered, “Trust me.”

“Never,” she replied, staring straight ahead.

But the hand he’d arranged to hold the card aloft didn’t waver, not even by a fraction of an inch. Until Drew wrapped a black silk blindfold around Billy’s eyes.

“Oh, no,” Esmerelda said, shaking her head violently and backing away from the both of them. “I’d rather take my chances with the knife throwers.”

She backed right into Virgil’s burly arms. “Don’t worry, honey,” he boomed in his own deafening rendition of a stage whisper. “Little Brother’s been doin‘ this trick since he was nine years old and he ain’t missed yet.”

“Then you hold the card,” she retorted, trying to force it into his hand.

He declined her invitation, choosing instead to scurry safely out of range, where Jasper, Samuel, and Enos awaited him. Esmerelda turned back only to discover that while she was preoccupied, Drew had led Billy an impressive distance away and left him there. He stood in the center of the arena with his long legs splayed, his hands poised loosely over his gunbelt. Trust me.

As that husky entreaty echoed through her mind, Esmerelda sighed, knowing she had no choice. Billy had her in his sights just as surely as he had on that moonlit night in Calamity. She couldn’t stop him from shooting at her any more than she could have stopped him from breaking her heart.

She slowly lifted the card, holding it between the very tips of her thumb and forefinger, and closed her eyes.

A shot rang out. She flinched. The crowd gasped. Daring to open only one eye, Esmerelda patted her chest, trying to determine exactly where she’d been shot.

When she failed to encounter anything more alarming than her mother’s locket, she screwed up the courage to open both eyes and count how many fingers she had left.

She was still holding the card.

Her mouth dropped open. Billy Darling had missed. But Billy Darling never missed, she thought wildly, her heart surging with treacherous tenderness. He’d simply refused to risk her life for the sake of a cheap parlor trick. Or at least that’s what she believed until she held the card up to the light and saw the smoking hole shot clean through the heart of the hapless queen.

The crowd went wild. The Darling gang vaulted back on their mounts and went galloping around the arena, mercifully distracting the audience.

Billy dragged off the blindfold and came striding toward her. Letting the card slip from her numb fingers, Esmerelda turned to flee, desperate to lose herself among the torrent of people who had began to pour out of their seats and stream toward the exits.

“Don’t run away from me, sweetheart.”

Undone by that hoarse plea from a man who never begged, Esmerelda whirled around. “I’m not your sweetheart! Or your honey. Or your angel. I’m nothing to you, Mr. Darling. You made that painfully clear on the occasion of our last parting.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t mean a damn word I said. I swear it. If I had, I wouldn’t have traveled halfway across the world to tell you different.”

“Ah, but how do I know you’re not simply trying to sweet-talk me back into your bed? After all, I know how precious your freedom is to a man like you.”

Billy flinched, realizing just how many times Esmerelda must have heard the echo of those cruel words.

The tears welling in her eyes began to spill down her cheeks. “After all, you’d never do anything so foolish as getting yourself hitched, despite the time we had in bed together.”