Carole Howey - Sheik's Glory Read online

  So much the better, he thought, shutting that door in his mind. It would make his task much easier. His tasks.

  "This is going to hurt," he informed her, aware that the fact caused him an unexpected, even an unwelcome, regret. "But I can set it back."

  "No!" In sudden panic, she grabbed his lapel with her left hand, and her gray eyes grew wide and wet. They reminded Flynn of the silvery iridescence of abalone. She was afraid. Well, she had a right to be. He'd seen men who'd fainted, heard men who'd roared bloody blasphemy when their shoulders were wrenched by unholy force back into their sockets. Her look of terror, and his own recollections, so disturbed him that he looked away.

  "Trust me." God, had he really said that to her? Him, Flynn Muldaur?

  With but another small whimper of weak protest, she released his coat and closed her eyes. She was resigned, it seemed. Against his will, Flynn felt a surge of admiration for her. He took a deep breath himself and positioned his hands on her arm and shoulder.

  "Ready?" He forced a light tone to mask his emotions.

  She gave a single, hesitant nod, and it was the last thing he saw before he blacked out.

  Chapter Two

  Missy did not see the blow that cast her angel down hard on the straw, but with the boy standing over her, brandishing a wooden bucket, she quickly deduced what had happened.

  "He hurt you, miss?" His lower lip was set and quivering.

  From the floor of the stable, the child looked like a spindly giant. His thin legs were splayed like a reckless buccaneer's and he clutched his unlikely weapon in one hand as if wielding a mace. She realized, staring at him, that he was much smaller than he at first had looked. And probably a good deal younger.

  "He was ....he was helping me," she managed to gasp. She could not be angry with her gallant young cavalier, who no doubt thought he'd rescued her from the man's evil designs. ''Helping you?" The boy's features clouded with dismay. "But I thought"

  "He was about to slip my shoulder back into place, until you clouted him. Help him. II can't move."

  The boy's look became guarded. "Where're those other fellows?"

  "They ran off." Missy tried to control her urge to cry out in pain. "This one came to help. See if you can bring him around. If you didn't kill him, that is."

  "Oh, gol . . ." The boy tossed his bucket aside as if it, and not he, had given offense, and he knelt in the straw beside the angel. His clothing, Missy noticed, was threadbare, besides looking as though it belonged to someone far smaller than he.

  "Hey!" He shook him. "Wake up, mister! It ain't but a knot, miss. See?"

  Missy craned her neck, afraid to move more than that. There was a knot on the angel's head, all right. Missy had seen full skeins of tangled wool yarn that weren't as big. Or as bloody.

  "Dear lord," she muttered, feeling light-headed at the sight.

  "Derlord?" the boy echoed, with a frown on his dirty face. "That his name?"

  "N-No." Missy stiffened against another surge of pain and prayed for patience. "His name is isoh, I don't know what his name is. Wake him, please, uh . . ." She realized, annoyed, that she did not know the boy's name either. She'd gotten herself injured and had ruined an otherwise perfectly good dress over a boy she did not even know and a horse who'd kicked her for thanks. She wanted to laugh at her foolishness, but the relentless, burning ache in her shoulder reminded her that she had little to laugh about.

  "Gideon," the boy supplied, sounding glad that at last he'd been given a task within his means. "My name's Gideon."

  "Gideon what?"

  "Just Gideon."

  "Well, 'Just Gideon,'" Missy breathed, feeling as if her shoulder were packed in embers. "I suggest you revive our angel over here, and quickly. I do believe I do believe I'm going to faint, myself."

  Missy had never fainted in her life, and she felt foolish doing it now when she so needed her wits about her, but she had no say in it. Blackness overcame her like a silent storm.

  "Hold her, now."

  Something, someone, had a grip on her arm. Something else, an irresistible weight, pinned her down in the straw. Her shoulder still ached, and it felt as if it had swelled up like an India rubber balloon. It took but a breath for her to realize she'd revived just in time to fully experience the spectacle of her shoulder being wrenched back into its proper position.

  "Ready?" a familiar voice asked.

  No! she wanted to shout, but she sensed that the voice was not addressing her. Moreover, her tongue was still asleep in her mouth. Wouldn't Allyn laugh at that, when she heard?

  In the next moment, laughter was the farthest thing from Missy's mind. She was pulled. A bolt, a fiery lance of dizzying pain shot through her shoulder from front to back. Humming. Grinding. Screaming.

  "Good thing she was unconscious already, or that would have knocked her out for sure." She recognized the voice of her angel, panting as she'd never have believed an angel might.

  I am conscious! she wanted to scream at him. She opened her mouth to say so, and was promptly sick. She sobbed.

  "Bleeding Jesus," he growled. "This is too much, Manners. I came in here to help out a woman, I get knocked on the head by a crazed child"

  "My name's Gideon, and I ain't a child!"

  "Shut up." The angel's testy voice silenced Gideon's petulant contradiction. "And for icing on the cake, I get to wear the contents of the woman's stomach on my best coat!"

  "When was the last time you went anywhere without there being some profit involved, Muldaur?"

  Missy felt a shudder of relief at the sound of Joshua's voice, despite the fact that there was no drollery whatever in his address. His baritone was, in fact, cold with skepticism, making his words a scathing insult to her angel.

  "We got her shoulder put to rights," Joshua went on flatly. "Now why don't you just get the hell out of here?"

  Oh, yes, she thought, squeezing her eyes shut tight. Go. Please. The notion of facing the angel after she'd vomited all over him was more than she could bear.

  "I thought I'd earned a civilized introduction for my gallantry, but as it is, I suppose retreat is the wisest course." Muldaur's humor was acid. "Maybe we'll meet at Filson's tonight."

  Dear God, she hoped not. How could she ever look the man in the eye again, having thrown up all over him? And them not even properly introduced?

  "The lady is a friend of mine. Like a sister of my wife." Joshua's reply was no warmer than his previous words. "I suggest you stay away from her."

  "Do you?" Muldaur sounded amused. Dangerously so. Excitingly so. "Advice is cheap, Manners. Cheaper still when it comes from you. But I'll be seeing her. Count on it."

  "Only a fool counts on you, Muldaur."

  There was a tense, electric silence after Joshua's drawling taunt. Not even the mare seemed to breathe.

  "Nevertheless, I will be seeing her. And you too, I suppose, since you appear to be her watchdog. Until then."

  She neither saw nor heard the angel go, but she knew he'd left the cramped stall as surely as if he'd kissed her hand before his departure. Something about Mr. Muldaur's drawling words evoked in Missy a troubling memory, but it slipped through a renewed wave of pain like a mischievous child playing hide-and-seek in a dark forest. . . .

  "She's comin' around." Gideon's whispered remark chased it away entirely.

  "Missy?"

  Missy opened her eyes at Joshua's gentle command, but her vision was clouded with unshed tears.

  "Gideon here told me what happened," he said, wearing a sympathetic, if rueful, grin on his wide mouth, displaying none of the antagonism he'd shown to her angel. "I left the Fosters inside to come look for you. You're a sight. Allyn's going to flay us both alive for this. You realize that, don't you?"

  Missy could only nod in fresh anguish. Of all the misery she had endured this afternoon, she most dreaded Allyn's reaction.

  "Who's Allyn?"

  "Never you mind, Gideon. I have the feeling you'll find out soon enough." Joshua glance
d at the boy, who stood just at his left shoulder; then he scrutinized Missy again. "How's that shoulder? Hurting much?"

  "It's been dislocated before. I'll be fine."

  If Joshua noticed that she'd avoided a direct answer to his query, he gave no indication.

  "I have to get you back to the hotel, preferably with

  out anyone seeing," he mused, looking about as if for assistance in this endeavor.

  "I want to purchase this mare," Missy told him, hoping she sounded more sturdy than she felt. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the boy, Gideon, straighten his slim shoulders.

  "We can discuss that later," Joshua replied briskly. He rose. "Can you walk?"

  "We can't discuss it later. They said she's to be taken away at the close of today's sale if she's not sold. There's no time." Missy got to her feet with Joshua's help. She closed her eyes again until the stall stopped reeling.

  "Do you know the animal?" Joshua challenged her.

  She shook her head. Joshua made a sound Missy recognized as masculine impatience for feminine whimsy.

  "She's a steady walker," Gideon piped up eagerly. "Has a nice high gait, but mild enough to take a lady's sidesaddle"

  He was interrupted by Joshua's laughter.

  "He doesn't know you, that's certain," he said to Missy, sounding more regretful than lofty. "She's looking for a breeder." He addressed Gideon again in a no-nonsense tone. "Miss Melissa Cannon's a trainer and breeder of top thoroughbreds, Gideon, and she's in the market for a dam for a very special sire. You'll pardon my saying so, but this mare doesn't look quite up to the C-Bar-C's usual standards."

  "Joshua, I want this horse."

  Joshua closed his eyes as if praying for patience.

  "All right. All right. It's your money. Just keep your voice down. If the owner's about, he's liable to bid against us just to drive up the price. Or Gideon here may go running to tell him."

  Joshua sent a critical glare in the boy's direction, and Missy perceived his meaning exactly.

  "Gideon won't be doing any such thing, will you, Gideon?"

  Missy detected not a trace of artifice in the boy's vehement shake of his shaggy, scruffy head. "No, ma'am. Miss. Miss Cannon."

  "I'm sure." Joshua was laconic, and doubtful. "By the look of him, he scarcely knows soap and water, let alone the owner of a thoroughbred mare. Am I right, Gideon?"

  Gideon glowered, but did not meet Joshua's gaze.

  "What are you doing here, son?" Joshua prodded in a softer tone. "This horse isn't anything to you, is she? Is your pa a handler here?"

  "I'm not your son," Gideon asserted in a voice cold with youthful anger that scarcely cloaked hurt. "And I don't have a pa. Nor a ma. All I have is Glory."

  "Glory?" Missy was confused.

  Gideon thrust his hand into his coat and withdrew a haphazardly folded paper. He punched it out toward her, his lower lip sucked firmly under the upper.

  Joshua took it for her and smoothed it open. He held it up to the pale light from the window.

  "Sic Transit Gloria,'" he muttered, frowning. "What an unfortunate name."

  "Sick?" Missy grew alarmed. "She doesn't look sick! Is she"

  "No, that's just her name, apparently," Joshua assured her, showing her the faced, crumpled document. "Sic Transit Gloria. It's Latin."

  "I just call her Glory." Gideon sounded as if dared not express so much as a hope.

  "Just as well," Joshua observed, not smiling as he looked at the now quiet animal.

  Missy scanned the paper Joshua handed her. On it she found the name of Stockton Farm, a stable with which she was unfamiliar. Below that, in rich, enviable, flourished script, the animal's name: Sic Transit Gloria. She traced the beautiful letters with the tip of her gloved finger. She left a dirt smudge between the Sic and the Transit, but that did not concern her: by the close of business today, the document and the mare would be hers.

  "I think it's a lovely name," she murmured, sidling closer to the mare, who flicked her long, inky tail in greeting. "Latin, you say? It sounds very noble and exotic. Inspiring. What does it mean?"

  "Oh, it's noble, all right, but hardly inspiring," Joshua agreed dryly. "It means, roughly, 'fame is fleeting.'"

  "I call her Glory," Gideon ventured again. "She likes that."

  "I imagine she would," Joshua mused, examining the mare. "Missy, she's showing a lot of daylight. Did you notice that? And she looks a bit short in front."

  "But she has open elbows." Missy found herself defending the creature, not even sure why. She had no use for the kind of brood mare Joshua was describing. There could be no question of it. But somehow she knew she wanted this horse. And, thank heaven and the C-Bar-C's late profitability, she was in a position to indulge herself with a speculative venture now and again.

  "And look here, Joshua." She pointed to the lineage. "Sic Semper Tyrannis out of Gloria In Excelsis." She struggled over the last word, but got it out intact. "Call it intuition, but I think this mare has potential. The blood's here. Blood will out. And besides," she felt compelled to add, unable to withhold a grin, "I can't credit that the Lord would put me through so much on this animal's account if I wasn't meant to have her."

  "Since when have the Lord and intuition anything to do with one another?" Joshua pressed his lips together as he regarded Missy. Missy liked Joshua very much. She theorized that his steady, powerful self-assurance was a perfect complement to his wife's brash, playful nature, and the three years of Allyn and Joshua's marriage had borne out her hypothesis. Even though they had not seen one another very often in that time, Missy had grown close to Joshua through Allyn's frequent correspondence. She had come to admire and respect him for many things, but above all for his good sense in having fallen in love with her best friend, Allyn Cameron.

  Joshua, it seemed to her, was a man who knew what he wanted. Moreover, he was a man who possessed remarkably keen instincts as to what might be good for other people. Coupled with this was his extraordinary ability to guide them, painlessly and without their having the slightest hint of outside interference, to an appropriate course of action. It was for this reason that he had become an effective and respected congressman in his home state of Maryland. It was also for this reason that Missy suddenly did not want to look at him anymore, or hear anything else he might have to say to her regarding her fresh and probably unwise preoccupation with the unknown mare and her devoted young steward.

  "I see you're set on it," Joshua observed, sounding as if he wished it might be otherwise. "Although I suspect that your interest may be as much on the young man's behalf as on the horse's."

  Missy said nothing. Gideon was, indeed, of more than passing concern to her. He seemed to have to one else to champion him, and in that regard he reminded her more than a little of herself as a child. In any case, she'd suffered insults, the ruin of her clothing, and a dislocated shoulder on his account; she had more than a little invested in the boy's welfare already. Joshua's intuitiveness, though, was uncanny, and more than a little troubling.

  "I'll handle the details of the purchase," Joshua went on in a brisk, businesslike way. "But we'd best get you back to the hotel before anything else happens to you. We can't have you parading about inside, smelling and looking like a stable hand. The Fosters and the others are understanding of what they see as your eccentricities, but even they have their limits. Now how am I going to get you safely home, and finish up your business for you here at the same time?"

  "Perhaps Mr. Muldaur could escort me."

  Missy covered her mouth with her dirty, gloved hand as soon as the words left her lips. She was stunned, mortified, that she'd even thought of the angel accompanying her back to the hotel, let alone that she'd said the words aloud. She did not even know Mr. Muldaur formally, nor he her. Goodness, she did not even know the man's first name. She recalled the terse exchange between him and Joshua when they'd thought her unconscious: Joshua, at least, seemed to want to keep it that way. She could not help wondering why, bu
t watching as he stroked his dimpled chin, she dared not ask.

  "So you met him," he remarked with an appraising nod and grimace. Missy, neither wishing to lie nor to admit the truth that she'd only heard Joshua call the man by name when they'd both thought her unconscious did not reply. Her face, however, grew uncomfortably warm under Joshua's long, steady, proprietary gaze.

  "Think of the most dangerously unreliable person man, woman, or child that you've ever known, and multiply that by about four," he went on, pinning her with a look that brooked no dissembling. "That's Flynn Muldaur. Through and through."

  Gideon stood still as a fence post, hoping neither adult would look in his direction. He had not lived to be nearly 12 years old with neither father nor mother, and managed to stay out of an orphanage since he was eight, without having learned a thing or two. He was a mite small for his age, he knew, but he'd quickly learned that his size could as often work to his advantage as not. Especially when it came to slipping through tight places such as improperly closed stable doors or out of the hammy grasp of a policeman hoping to collar a nimble young thief.