Marrying the Major. Victoria Bylin

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СКАЧАТЬ to the sacrifice of the driver, they’d escaped while he’d challenged the outlaws with his pistol. She and Bessie had run for their lives and hidden in a ravine, listening as the Carvers killed the driver and ransacked their trunks and other shipments. When the outlaws finished, they’d stolen the horses and pushed the yellow coach into the ravine.

      Cracked and lying on its side, the old Concord had offered adequate shelter from the sun, very little from the rain and none from the frightful howling of wolves.

      In the scramble down the hill, Bessie had sprained her ankle. By herself, Caroline had piled rocks on the dead driver, then she’d salvaged what she could of their possessions. In the course of her efforts, she’d found a crate addressed to Major Smith from the Farr, Powers and Weightman Chemical Laboratory in Philadelphia. It had been opened and the contents had been dumped without care. In the pile of broken bottles, she’d seen a label marked “Sulphate of Quinine.” Knowing the value of the medicine, she’d salvaged seven of the twelve bottles. They were wrapped in an old nightgown and hidden in the stagecoach for safekeeping.

      She knew the major was ill, and she’d assumed he had a chronic illness or a war injury. Now she wondered if he was suffering from malaria. It had been a scourge during the war that had destroyed the South. Bessie had served as a nurse during the conflict, and she’d complained often that illness killed more men than mini balls. Major Smith, it seemed, was a very ill man. Seeing the medicine, Caroline had thought of his motherless children. Who would love them if they lost their father? Malaria was a fickle disease. It could take a man’s life in a day or linger in his blood for years.

      Outlaws had the same penchant for randomness. Aware of the slow, measured steps coming toward her, Caroline weighed her options. Bessie’s ankle meant they couldn’t run. Neither could they hide. Huddling against the undercarriage of the coach, she whispered into her sister’s ear. “Bessie, wake up but don’t move.”

      Her sister’s eyelids fluttered open.

      The footsteps were closer now. A bird took flight from a cottonwood. Caroline wanted to fly away, too. Instead she clutched the shotgun. The steps came closer. She heard the slide of dirt and rock as he reached the bottom of the hill, then the thump of leather on dirt as he paced toward the coach. A squirrel leapt from one branch to another, springing high and then landing with a bounce. Leaves fell like dry rain. With each step the stranger came closer to the coach until all noise stopped. Caroline took a breath and held it. Nothing stirred. Not a bird. Not a breeze. Bessie lay still, watching with wide eyes and signaling her with a nod to be brave.

      Leaping to her feet, Caroline aimed the shotgun at the man’s chest. “Who are you?”

      He looked at her as if she were no more dangerous than a gnat. Refusing to blink, she stared down the barrel at a man who looked more like a scarecrow than an outlaw. Tall and gaunt, he had hair the color of straw and eyes so red-rimmed they seemed more gray than blue. His clothes hung on his broad shoulders, but there was no mistaking the fine tailoring. She took in the creases around his mouth, his stubbled jaw and finally the boots that reached to his knees. Black and spit-shined, they didn’t belong to a shiftless outlaw.

      She couldn’t say the same for the pistol in his hand. It was loose and pointed downward, but she felt the threat. She dug the shotgun into her shoulder. “Throw down your gun!”

      He raised one eyebrow. “I’d prefer to holster it, if you don’t mind.”

      That voice … it reminded her of a fog bell coming out of a mist, a warning she remembered from the Carolina shore, the place of her birth and the reason for her name. She heard the trace of an accent she couldn’t identify, not the boisterous timbre of an Englishman or a German, but the muted tones of a man who’d worked to leave the past behind.

      When she didn’t speak, he holstered the gun then looked at her with his hands slightly away from his body, taking in her appearance with a flick of his eyes. Caroline knew what he’d see … A woman with an average face and an average figure, past her prime but young enough to want a husband. For a few months she’d once been secretly married, but he’d see a spinster. A woman desperate enough for a family that she’d decided to become a governess. If she couldn’t have children of her own, she’d borrow them.

      First, though, she had to get rid of this unknown man studying her with both fascination and fury.

      “Get your hands up!” she ordered.

      He kept them loose at his sides. “Perhaps—”

      “Raise them!”

      He let out a sigh worthy of a frustrated king. “If you insist.”

      Slowly he raised his arms, holding her gaze with a force that nearly made her cower. When his hands were shoulder-high, palm out so she that she could see the aristocratic length of his fingers, he lowered his chin. “Perhaps, Miss Bradley, you’d allow me to introduce myself?”

      The accent was no longer muffled. Thick and English, it held a command that made her lower the shotgun. She didn’t need to hear Tristan Willoughby Smith say his name to know she’d just met her future employer, and that she’d impressed him … in all the wrong ways.

       Chapter Two

      “Major Smith!”

      Tristan arched one brow at the stunned brunette. “May I lower my hands now?”

      “Of course.” Most people groveled when they realized they’d stepped on his toes. Caroline Bradley snapped to attention but not in the way of an underling. She looked him square in the eye. “I’m sure you understand my reaction. As you can see, the stagecoach was robbed.”

      “Yes.”

      He wished now they hadn’t stopped at dusk. As luck would have it, they’d camped less than a mile away. By the morning light he’d spotted in the debris a woman’s shoe and a nightgown that had been mauled by dirty hands. Certain the two Miss Bradleys had been on the coach, he’d left Jon to search through the crates and had maneuvered down the ravine. He’d spotted the yellow coach lying on its side but hadn’t seen the women. Until Miss Bradley had gotten the jump on him, he’d believed the sisters had been abducted by the Carvers or left for dead inside the coach.

      Looking at her now, the one he assumed to be the governess, he decided the timing of his arrival had been fortuitous. If he’d arrived in the dark, she’d have shot him. The elder Miss Bradley—the nurse—was struggling to stand.

      Tristan stepped around the overturned coach and offered his hand. “Allow me.”

      “Thank you,” she replied.

      When the elder Miss Bradley reached her feet, the younger Miss Bradley put her arm around her waist to steady to her. Tristan couldn’t address both women as “Miss Bradley.” In his mind he’d think of them as Caroline and Elizabeth. If only one sister was present, he’d address her as Miss Bradley. When they were together, etiquette required him to address the eldest as Miss Bradley and the younger as Miss Caroline. Looking at the women, he easily discerned the difference in their ages and spoke to the nurse. “I presume you’re Miss Elizabeth Bradley?”

      “That’s correct, sir.”

      He looked at the governess and wished the rules of etiquette weren’t quite so clear. Calling this pretty woman by her given name struck him as too personal, even when he prefaced her name with “Miss.” He studied her with a СКАЧАТЬ