The Outlaw's Bride. Catherine Palmer

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      “You’re the man who married me, Noah Buchanan, and I command you to treat me with respect!”

      “If I’m the man you married, Isobel, then you’d better do as I say. That means no taking matters into your own hands and getting somebody killed. If I’m your husband, I’m the boss. You hear?”

      Simmering, Isobel stared at the towering cowboy who presumed to rule over her by his bartered title of “husband.” His blue eyes fairly crackled as he met her gaze.

      “You know nothing,” she managed.

      “I know that right now you’re starting to look like a blushing bride.”

      “Oh, yes, my strong, brave husband,” she responded, bat ting her eyes for effect. “I will stitch and bake—and weep for joy when I hear your footsteps on the porch.”

      “You do that, sweetheart.” Chuckling, Noah tucked Isobel close and strolled with her toward the adobe home.

      At the warmth of his arm around her shoulders and the graze of his unshaved jaw against her cheek, it occurred to Isobel that perhaps she wouldn’t mind being a wife who would sew and bake and wait for her husband to come home at night. What a curious thought.

      CATHERINE PALMER

      The author of more than fifty novels with more than two million copies sold, Catherine Palmer is a Christy Award-winner for outstanding Christian romance fiction. Catherine’s numerous awards include Best Historical Romance, Best Contemporary Romance, Best of Romance from Southwest Writers Workshop, and Most Exotic Historical Romance Novel from RT Book Reviews. She is also an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award winner.

      Catherine grew up in Bangladesh and Kenya, and she now makes her home in Georgia. She and her husband of thirty years have two sons. A graduate of Southwest Baptist University, she also holds a master’s degree from Baylor University.

      The Outlaw’s Bride

      Catherine Palmer

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      MILLS & BOON

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      Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.

      —Romans 12:19

      To Sharon Buchanan-McClure who introduced me to the real Belle Buchanan

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      Chapter Eighteen

      Chapter Nineteen

      Chapter Twenty

      Chapter Twenty-One

      Chapter Twenty-Two

      Epilogue

      Acknowledgments

      Letter to Reader

      Questions for Discussion

      Chapter One

      February 18, 1878

      Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory

      Isobel stood, her crimson boots side by side like drops of bright blood on the snow. She stared at her feet for a moment, thinking how far they had come from the sprawling pasturelands of her beloved Spanish Catalonia to this slushy trail in the New World. Weeks aboard a wave-tossed ship, days across the Texas prairie to Fort Belknap, miles along the Goodnight-Loving cattle trail toward Santa Fe…and for what?

      Sighing, she pulled her lace mantilla closer around her face, lifted her chin and walked on through the scrubby, wind-whipped trees. Her emerald hem swept across fallen, brown pine needles, the ruffle on her skirt rippling along behind.

      It had happened here, she thought, near this very place. A shiver of apprehension coursed through her as she looked in the twilight at the secluded forest. Five years earlier, her father—the powerful Don Alberto Matas—had been jerked from his buckboard wagon and shot.

      Isobel tightened her knotted fingers inside her muff and squeezed her eyes shut against the sting of tears. As a child, she had believed her father invincible.

      Forcing away the fear that haunted her—transforming it to the more comfortable heat of anger—she gritted her teeth. Why had the lawless Americans done nothing to find her father’s murderer? Not only a murderer but a thief. The killer had stolen the packet of land-grant titles and jewels that had been her inheritance—the dowry to secure her marriage to Don Guillermo Pascal of Santa Fe.

      She inhaled a deep breath of crisp, pine-scented air. Five years had passed, yet the anger and betrayal still burned brightly in her heart. Despite the pain, the five years spent managing her father’s vast estates in Spain had been good ones. She had overseen lands, governed workers and carved a faith that could not be shaken. And then she had traveled to America.

      Though СКАЧАТЬ