Steal Me, Sweet Thief Read online

  Then why did the spider want her back?

  That question, among others, troubled him. Geneva herself might know the answers, but of course it was impossible to ask her, for now.

  Little Rock, Arkansas, rumbled closer as the unrelenting wheels of the train chewed up the ground beneath them. Lennox would never expect them to head for Little Rock, Macalester figured, and by the time the bounty hunter had worked it out, they would be well on their way to Fort Worth, traveling as inconspicuously as possible. Stagecoach and wagon were unthinkable: The ruthless and wily Lennox could easily overtake them, poking along on four wheels. They would make the three-hundred-mile journey on horseback in less than a week, if they rode hard.

  Kieran willed himself to feel nothing as they debarked from the train. His aim was to find a hotel and get a good night's sleep before buying horses and provisions—and breaking the news to Geneva Lionwood about his master design.

  If the diva noticed his dark humor, she did not remark upon it. She remained tranquil and pleasant, commenting on the rustic charm of the town as they traveled the short distance to a hotel.

  His habit had been to secure two adjoining rooms for their use, and his conscience would not allow him to alter that, even though Geneva exhibited mild amusement at the arrangement. And indeed, after they had dined and retired for the evening, he had neither the will nor the inclination to stay away from her. She slept soundly in his arms afterward while he, perversely, could not lure sleep. He lay in the darkness, wide awake, counting the hours until morning.

  Geneva stretched alone in her bed, blessing her good fortune. It was daylight and McAllister was gone, off, she supposed, to make further arrangements for their continuing journey. She sat up in bed and pushed the covers down to her knees. McAllister was very good for her. Aside from being an exceptional lover, he was also wonderful company, if somewhat reserved. Still, she mused, they were a long way from San Francisco. There would be ample time to learn all of his secrets.

  She got out of bed. The coolness of the polished pine floor beneath her bare feet was a welcome jolt, awakening her even more. She washed, but did not dress. Perhaps she could lure the quietly passionate attorney back to bed when he returned from his mission. She smiled to herself, feeling an unexpected warmth wash over her at the memory of the night: his hard, lean body against hers; his wide, talented mouth touching her all over. Remembering these things, she was confident she could entice him.

  To pass the time until his return, she puttered about the small room, picking up articles of clothing she and McAllister had, in their fevered haste, carelessly abandoned the night before. She sorted her own things, determining which required laundering and which could be salvaged for an additional wearing. Next, she turned her attention to his.

  His trousers were heaped upon the floor. She giggled, feeling a ripple of excitement surge through her as she thought of him undressing. His body was like a Michelangelo sculpture, although he seemed disarmingly unaware of that fact. His shirt lay upon the vanity bench like a dissolute guest, and she picked it up, shaking the wrinkles from it. She recalled that he had carefully hung his coat in the armoire. Odd that he should treat that one article with such care, having so recklessly discarded the others.

  She remembered his peculiar quirk of patting his lapel. Come to think of it, she hadn't seen him perform that little ritual ever since she'd mentioned it on the train several days ago.

  A man with secrets.

  A quiet man, a thoughtful man, a man carefully in control, except between the sheets. She shivered with delight. If she could find some clue to him, perhaps she might breach that control at other times, as well.

  Should she?

  How could she not?

  The armoire door stuck as if Mac had tried to lock it, but the lock failed and the door creaked open. His coat was inside, a sentry at its post, ready to be seduced into desertion. She giggled at her foolish fancy and fingered the lapel.

  To her surprise, she felt something in an inside pocket.

  One of your secrets, Mac? she wondered, slipping her fingers inside.

  There was a long, white envelope that looked as if it had been carried about for some time. It was not sealed. A love letter, perhaps? She could not deny a stab of jealousy at the thought. Perhaps she was better off not knowing, after all.

  No. What harm could it do? At the very worst, the contents of the envelope were irrelevant. At best, they might give her a glimpse of, and therefore an advantage over, R. Hastings McAllister, Esquire. With careful, deft fingers, she slipped the paper from its casing and unfolded it.

  It was, to her bewilderment, addressed to the Honorable Oren Roberts, Governor of the State of Texas. The handwriting was a coarse scrawl that was vaguely familiar to her. She skipped past the salutations to the second paragraph. The black words on the page seemed to move, like ants over spilled honey. Several of them leaped at her:

  "… Kieran Macalester and Billy Deal, whom I personally know to have recanted their crimes and who have proven to be of invaluable assistance to me in several delicate matters of business which have also affected the welfare of the State of Texas and most recently in the recovery of my wife. It is for this reason that I respectfully request you consider granting them amnesty…"

  The paper began to shake. Geneva realized, feeling her insides recoil as though she'd been kicked, that her hand was trembling. She skipped down to the closing to confirm what she now already knew: It was signed by Garland Humble.

  Against her will, she remembered Garland. Garland loved to buy things. To own things. His Louis Quatorze desk. His bust of Julius Caesar. His preposterously expensive Napoleon brandy, and the one-of-a-kind Waterford crystal goblets in which he served it. He had a ridiculous piece of machinery called a Welte Forsetzer, a German gadget that worked like a sort of inside-out player piano, when it worked at all. She remembered he'd tried to get a rather prominent pianist to record piano scores of operas and songs on its cylinders, so she might have some accompaniment to sing with, just for him.

  His very own bird in a gilded cage.

  Her gremlin had been busy indeed while she'd lived under Humble's roof.

  No time for reverie. San Francisco evaporated like a mirage. McAllister. Macalester. The San Francisco attorney was in fact a wanted criminal in the employ of her estranged husband. The letter fell to the floor as her hands went to her mouth.

  Deal and Macalester. The names came back to her from the past. Although she had never paid much attention to the stories, she recalled enough about them to know that the two men were wanted in Texas and perhaps elsewhere for their parts in a score of train and bank robberies during a five-year period that ended abruptly over two years before.

  McAllister. Macalester. No emissary of the San Francisco Opera and Light Theater Company; no more than a common criminal.

  A common criminal she had taken to her bed.

  Geneva sank to the bench, feeling faint. She must think. She must concentrate. She must fight the urge to shed useless tears of anger, fear and hurt, and look beyond the present to her immediate future.

  She steadied herself Could there be a simple explanation behind the letter? She was given to flights of fancy; hadn't she believed Blaine Atherton when he'd offered her Covent Garden? It was possible that the similarity of names was merely a coincidence. After all, McAllister was an attorney. She recalled, then, the man in the train station in Memphis. Lennox, McAllister had called him. You ain't Billy Deal, he had remarked.

  The notion that Garland Humble had gone to all of this trouble to bring her back to Fort Worth was preposterous, yet it would be in perfect harmony with his wicked, possessive, manipulative style. Briskly, she reviewed her alternatives.

  She could confront McAllister with her discovery and demand an explanation. Of course, he could lie. And if he had lied to her from the beginning, as she suspected, then why would he admit the truth now? She could demand that he return her to New York, but that, she realized griml
y, could be much more difficult than it sounded. After all, Garland had no doubt offered the man a reward, of which the amnesty letter was very likely only a part. And even if the felon did nurse any tender feelings for her… Well. Any man who had no compunction about making love to a woman under such appallingly false pretenses would hardly be moved by the pleas of his victim.

  Against her will, she recalled his touch, its gentleness and urgency. The sadness, the infinite tenderness in his face. God help me, he had said against her throat.

  Her eyes were wet. Mac, how could you do this to me? She choked back a sob and shook herself into action. How could she have done this to herself? Trusting the wrong man? Again?

  You were wrong? Audrey, Geneva thought, tasting the bitterness in her mouth. Oh, how very wrong you were! If only I could tell you!

  There was movement outside of the door. No time to summon the gremlin. She must act, and act now. Shaking, ice cold with fear, she quickly seized the lamp from the table beside her bed with both hands. Praying that she was strong enough, both physically and emotionally, she positioned herself behind the door. As she heard the key slide into the lock, she lifted the lamp high above her head.

  "Geneva, I—" Macalester entered the room, his back to the door. He was dressed in jeans and a dark chambray shirt, looking, at last, more like an outlaw of the Wild West than the reserved San Francisco attorney he had pretended to be. Geneva steeled herself, planting her bare feet firmly. The outlaw paused for a moment, not moving. She held her breath.

  "Geneva?" he called again, as if to himself.

  She resisted a compelling urge to hurl invective at him, satisfying herself with bringing the big, heavy lamp down hard upon the back of his head. The sound of the crash was awful. The lamp shattered, and there was broken glass everywhere. She watched Macalester crumple to the floor in a solid heap and dropped the remains of the appliance on his back.

  She dressed quickly and stuffed a few of her belongings into her valise. The rest of her luggage would be sacrificed, admittedly a small price to pay for her continued liberty. She rifled Macalester's pockets and found, blessedly, three hundred dollars, more than enough money to buy her way back to New York, or anywhere else she might decide to go. She paused at last at the door, staring down upon the immobile outlaw with a strange mixture of loathing and longing.

  Mac's angular features were softened by his state of unconsciousness. His wide mouth, the mouth in which she had taken such delight mere hours before, hung slightly open, pressed against the polished pine floor. A sob rose in her throat, and she quickly turned her back on him. He had played her for a fool and had very nearly won. In a last, parting gesture, she placed the letter that had betrayed him in his open hand, closing his long, slack fingers about it. Then she stepped over him and out of the door, closing and locking it behind her as if shutting her heart securely inside of a solid steel vault.

  Macalester's first conscious thought was of pain. His head felt as if it had been used as a blacksmith's anvil. With effort, he opened his eyes. It took a moment or two for his vision to clear. There were bits of broken glass spread out like a carpet across the pine floor before his eyes.

  He tried to think, but the wall of pain prevented it. Then he tried to sit up and discovered the soft parchment in his left hand. He did sit up then. Broken glass ground under his legs as he curled them up beneath him for support. Bewildered and disoriented, he unfolded the paper.

  The pain did not subside, but his mind cleared instantly as the import of his predicament struck him, as surely as had the lamp that lay in pieces on the floor around him: Geneva had found the letter. She had found him out. And then she had gone.

  Damn, he thought, reaching back with one hand to touch the painful knot rising on the back of his head. Geneva Lionwood did nothing by halves.

  He leaned his back against the door, willing the pain away. It did not vanish completely, but it did subside. Then he totaled the situation.

  Late-morning sunshine filled the room; she could not have been gone long. An hour, two at most. Her aim would have been to put as much distance as possible between them, and the best ways to do that were by train, stagecoach or flatboat down the Arkansas to the Mississippi.

  He raked his fingers through his hair, closing his eyes against the throbbing pain radiating from the lump on the back of his head. There was a burning in his gut that made the pain in his head seem inconsequential: Maybe he should just let her go. Return to Humble empty-handed. Tell the old spider that she had given him the slip. Slowly, he struggled to his feet, leaning against the door until the room stopped spinning. No, that was unthinkable. Garland Humble, master of trickery and deceit, would take one look at his face and know that he was lying. And he would probably know or guess why, as well. And he, Macalester, could watch his amnesty slip further out of reach, and would probably never see Geneva again to explain himself, or to apologize.

  He concentrated on placing one foot before the other and managed to stumble to the washstand. He poured water into the bowl from the pitcher, and it slopped over the sides. He leaned over and splashed it onto his face, then wrung out a washcloth and applied it to the wound on the back of his head. Holding the cool, damp cloth against the bump, Macalester stared at his reflection. His hair was disarrayed, his dark eyes vacant and his angular jaw clenched. Cursing his monumental stupidity, he turned away from the image and kicked a broken piece of the lamp. The fragment skittered across the floor and banged against the door. It clattered back to the floor and presently came to rest. The room settled into silence again.

  Time was wasting. Tossing the washcloth aside, Macalester gathered a few of his belongings, including the damned and damning letter, electing to leave the excess behind. Seldom in his adult life had he owned more than two changes of clothing, and it looked as if his masquerading days were at an end. The hand-tailored suits would not be needed anymore; they would merely weigh him down. He preferred not to ruminate upon the deeper ramifications of such a sentiment, haste being the order of the moment. Time enough for philosophical reflections after he had gotten Geneva Lionwood back.

  He did not even bother to lock the door upon leaving the room. His barest belongings slung over his shoulder in saddlebags, he started down the hall toward the stairs, his heart as heavy as his throbbing head. Just as he was about to begin his descent to the lobby, voices drifted up the stairwell.

  "… last night." That was the clerk, his faint drawl a combination of nasal Midwest and Southern transplant. "What room are they in?" another voice, gravely and low, asked. "I'd like to surprise them." Macalester froze. Lennox!

  Backing quietly away from the stairs, he moved up the hallway toward the window, careful to walk close to the wall but on the carpet. His heavy boots were a liability, but he was able to negotiate the short distance without causing so much as a creak of a floorboard.

  The window was closed and locked. Macalester looked outside, assessing his chances. The slanted roof of the wraparound porch was right below the casement, and from its edge there was, he judged, about a ten- or twelve-foot drop to the yard. He had wanted to question the clerk about Geneva, but that would be impossible now. He would have to gamble on the window and trust his luck in tracking her down on his own, and staving one jump ahead of Lennox.

  Resolutely, he unlatched the window. It gave way with an unoiled squeak of protest. Instantly, he was aware of a heavy, running step upon the stair: He had given himself away. Muttering a brief curse, he eased himself out of the window, flattening his broad back against the green wooden shutters as he drew his revolver from the holster at his hip. His situation drew some curious stares from passersby, but he waved them on with the muzzle of his gun. They did not require additional warning. His gesture and, he knew, his grim expression persuaded them that undue curiosity might be injurious to their continued well-being.

  Inside, in the hallway, he heard the running footsteps of someone, probably Lennox, approaching the window. He prayed that the bou
nty hunter would make a mistake, even a simple one such as poking his head out of the window to have a look around.

  Lennox was so near that Macalester could hear him breathing, inches away from him, just inside the casement. Macalester held his breath, not daring to move. There was a creak of old wood as Lennox leaned a heavy hand upon the sill. In another moment a shadow moved slowly across the shutter.

  "You, there!" a voice from the house across the alley shouted.

  Macalester looked up sharply to see an old matron in a second-story window, her plain, hard features expressing annoyance, her tightly corseted bosom, in white linen, heaving with outrage.

  "What are you doing, on that—"

  What happened next happened in the twinkling of an eye. Lennox shoved his head out of the window and had just turned it in his direction when Macalester landed the butt end of his gun upon the back of the bounty hunter's neck with enough force to pull him from the window and send him tumbling over the porch roof and down, with a hard thump, to the ground below. To the accompaniment of continued vituperative shouts from across the way, Macalester negotiated the roof to the rear of the building. He blessed his fortune in finding a handy downspout, which he used to lower himself easily to the ground. He peeked around the corner to see that a small cluster of curious onlookers had already gathered about Lennox, who lay as still as death. Macalester hoped, briefly, that he had not killed the man: Murder did not sit well with governors contemplating amnesty.

  But he could waste no more time. Geneva Lionwood was on the loose, and he could not afford to let her slip away. There were but two weeks left in Garland Humble's timetable, and Billy's future, as well as his own, depended on him sticking to it.

  He guessed he had thirty minutes, possibly an hour, before Lennox would be on his trail again, and he needed to use the time wisely. On the big roan he had purchased earlier that morning from the livery, he rode the main street of Little Rock inquiring as to Geneva's whereabouts. He let out that she was his wife, and that she had run off after an argument. His story met with sympathy, ridicule and even admonishments to beat her when he recovered her, but very little in the realm of solid information. Of course, Geneva was no fool. She would have expected him to look, and look hard, and so would have made herself as inconspicuous as possible among the populace of Little Rock.