Devil's Dare

In the end Mercy settled upon a dress that had been Mama’s, realizing that she had nothing of her own that did not shout the fact that she was the preacher’s daughter and had no business in Abilene’s saloons. But Mama had been the daughter of a banker, and had possessed a great many dresses for events more worldly than those she would attend after she had made her unlikely match with the Reverend Jeremiah Fairweather. She had saved some of these in the large cedar chest at the foot of Mercy and Charity’s bed, thinking the girls might be able to use them someday.

The forest green silk dress had a round neckline that dipped low, and since their mother had been a little smaller in the bust than Mercy was, when Mercy dropped it over her head it revealed a shadowy hint of cleavage. She would have to remember to keep her shawl wrapped around her.

She crept down the short hallway as quietly as she could, freezing momentarily when she forgot which plank in the floor always creaked. But her father’s snoring, audible as usual all over the house, continued unabated.

By the light of her candle the grandfather clock in the parlor showed the time to be ten minutes to midnight. Shivering, Mercy patted her hair, which she’d twisted into a knot at the nape of her neck, and gathered the fringed black paisley shawl tightly over her mother’s dress. Then, murmuring a prayer that Papa wouldn’t hear her and that she’d find Charity before he awoke, she exited the house. She’d try the Alamo Saloon first. It was the biggest, and catered to the Texans. It was the most likely place her sister had gone.

The merriment showed no signs of diminishing as the ornate clock over the door of the Alamo Saloon struck the hour of midnight, but Sam’s mood was far from merry. He’d drifted over to the mahogany-and-brass bar and was leaning on it, nursing a beer. So far he’d seen no signs of Miss Mercedes LaFleche, though he’d kept a steady watch on the staircase. Earp had disappeared at some point. The only thing left to do was watch his cowhands get steadily more drunk, and that was getting old quickly. He was wasting his time. Maybe he ought to call it a night and begin his hunt again after a good night’s sleep.

Tom Culhane had gone out the back door a few minutes ago with his little blonde, “for a stroll,” he’d said, but Sam knew darn well what was on the cowboy’s mind. He’d start by kissing Charity Fairweather, then his hands would start to stray…No doubt by then they’d already be discussing her price. Maybe they’d even consummate the deal right out there in the alley, up against one of the buildings. He’d heard some of the whores had been forced to conduct their business that way the last year before the brothels had been built, and Sam imagined most weren’t averse to doing it that way again if their customers were impatient.

Sam only hoped that Tom wasn’t going to try to sneak the little blonde into his room at the Drover’s Cottage and get them all in trouble. The landlord had already made it quite clear that he didn’t hold with such things—the soiled doves were not to roost in his rooms, he’d said.

“New in these parts?” the bartender asked him as he wiped a glass dry behind the bar.

He barely glanced at the man before replying, “Just in town to sell my herd.”

“Up from Texas?”

“Yeah.” He knew his answer had been curt. It would have been mannerly to extend his hand and give the man his name, but he wasn’t feeling very mannerly right now. And anyway, a man never knew when admitting to being a Texan would land him in a ruckus. He’d already run into some hostile Kansans fussing about their own cattle being endangered by tick-infested Texas longhorns bringing the Texas fever. The danger had been exaggerated out of proportion, of course, and it seemed that the Kansans had forgotten about the boom the drovers were bringing to the area.

But the man, who wore a patch over his right eye and had several scars marring the same side of his face, didn’t seem hostile. “Deacon Paxton’s my name.” He wiped his hand dry with the towel he had over his shoulder, then offered it to Sam.

Sam felt vaguely ashamed as he shook the man’s hand. There was no need to take his sour, suspicious mood out on the bartender. “Sam Devlin. You say your name is Deacon?” he asked, more to make amends for his earlier abruptness than because he was curious.

The man smiled, his expression lightening the somewhat weary, somber side of his face beneath a silvering thatch of hair. “They like to joke with me because I read the Bible when it’s not busy around here. So they call me Deacon.”

“You oughta be a preacher—seems like they’re scarce around here,” Sam commented, nodding toward the street to indicate the whole town.

Deacon Paxton chuckled. “I am—or at least, I was once. There ain’t no church built in Abilene yet. There’s a Baptist preacher who holds services in his house a couple of streets over, though, so I reckon he sees to folks’ souls around here. In addition to informing us that the saloon keepers an’ the cowboys an’ the gals in th’ saloons are bound for perdition, that is.”

Sam snorted. “That’s just about the whole population of Abilene, isn’t it?”

Meeting Deacon and talking about the fire-andbrimstone Baptist preacher had made Sam think about his brother Caleb, who’d been a minister, too. Unlike Sam and the oldest Devlin brother, Garrick, Caleb had been in the Union army, because of his belief that no man should own another—though the Devlins themselves had no slaves. Unlike Sam and Garrick also, Caleb had never returned. Sam barely remembered his older brother’s face now, some seven years after they’d said goodbye. Cal had been a gentle man of the cloth, who spoke of God’s love rather than his wrath. He wondered what had happened to him. Where was the markerless grave that held his elder brother’s body—or had there even been enough of him to bury?

“Say, where in Texas—” the bartender began, then broke off as he saw his customer’s attention was distracted.

Sam had just been about to politely excuse himself and go back to the Drover’s Cottage when an auburn-haired woman had peered over the curved doors, then let herself in.

Could it be…? It had to be. The woman was lovely, though far younger than Sam had imagined she’d be, small boned and dainty. He couldn’t see much of her figure; she kept a shawl clutched tightly about her, but her face would have held his interest in any case—a classic oval with large, deeply green eyes and a mouth that was wider than the rosebud pout favored by the classic beauties of the day, but which looked to him as if it were meant for kissing.

But how had she gotten from upstairs to out in the street? Either Earp was wrong about her going upstairs, or the saloon had a back stairway, which was more likely.

The woman had to squint to see through the haze of smoke that filled the saloon. She looked in all corners of the room, and it was obvious from her frustrated, worried expression that she hadn’t found who she was seeking.

He was not the only man who had spied her. A pair of cowboys, slouched over beers near the door, had straightened and were just preparing to rise when Sam stepped forward, cutting them off at the pass. If this was his quarry, he wanted to get to her first.

“You seem to be looking for someone, ma’am…may I be of service?” he said, going to the door and motioning her through.

She stared at him, clearly startled, as if she had not seen him approach.

“Sam Houston Devlin, ma’am.” He raised his voice a little to be heard over the piano music, and made a little bow. Gallantry was always a good touch. “May I buy you a drink?”

She glanced at the bar, and at Deacon Paxton standing behind it, then looked quickly back at Sam, shaking her head. “No…I…I am looking for someone just now…my sister…”

He was disappointed that she seemed too preoccupied to have noticed his gallantry, but grinned and said, “Well, then, why don’t you tell me your name, ma’am, and then tell me your sister’s name, and I’ll sure help you find her.” He gave her his biggest, friendliest smile, the smile that had melted the hearts of the belles back home, and occasionally their resistance.

“M-Mercy,” she said, her green eyes round as marbles as she stared up at him as if trying to memorize his features.

Mercy. Mercedes! Hot damn, she was the one! He congratulated himself at finding her at last. Earp should have told him she went by a shortened form of her name. Maybe this night wasn’t over yet. Maybe—just maybe—he could even win the bet tonight. He imagined finding Earp tomorrow and telling him he’d already won the bet. She was still studying him, which meant she apparently found him interesting, and that was a good start.

He winked at her. “Are you begging, or is that your name, darlin’?” he asked her, his drawl caressing and honey sweet.

Mercy stared up at the very man who had been haunting her thoughts most of the day—when she hadn’t been worrying about her errant younger sister, at least—the darkhaired, mustachioed Texan she’d glimpsed through the window of the Frontier Store, the one who’d been standing and watching the saloon girls promenade down Texas Street. And now he was standing right next to her, looking down at her!

She’d thought his eyes would be brown, because of his nearly black hair and mustache, but she noted with surprise that they were blue, the deepest, darkest blue she had ever seen. Blue like the ocean’s depths, she thought, remembering a colored illustration in her mother’s Bible, which had been captioned, “Genesis chapter one, verse two: ‘…And darkness was upon the face of the deep…’“

His lean face was bronzed by the sun, and his eyes had crinkles around them at the outer corners, lines that meant a man was used to being out in the blistering glare of the sun. When she had first seen him outside he had not been smiling, and his eyes had been narrowed against the sun, like the eyes of a wolf; yet now, in the dimmer lamplight, his eyes were no less predatory than they had looked then. And the smile he had leveled on her, a smile that was making her heart thump against the confines of her corset, made him dangerous indeed.

She felt herself blushing as she realized he was making a play on words with her name. The realization brought her out of the rosy haze his presence had produced.

“Mercy is my name, Mr. Devlin,” she explained, a trifle sharply, to make it clear she didn’t find his double entendre amusing.

“Have mercy on me and please, call me Sam,” he responded with an easy grin, as if he hadn’t noticed her sharpness. “I’m right pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Mercy. Sure I can’t buy you a drink before we look for your sister?”

Oh, dear, this was just the very thing she had feared, some cowboy thinking she was one of the girls who worked here! But it was too bad it had to be this man who had acted just like the lecherous demon-Texans her father preached against.

“No, I’m afraid I must find my sister, but thanks all the same. Her name is Charity and she’s blond, and about as tall as I am. Have you seen her? It’s important that I find her immediately. She…she really shouldn’t be here—she’s only fifteen, though she looks a little older,” she added, frowning, glancing away from his face to look around the smoke-filled saloon again. She didn’t see Charity, but there were several other females, a couple of them draped around men playing cards, another sitting in a cowboy’s lap as he openly fondled her, still others paired with cowboys dancing recklessly around the room to the tinkling piano music.

The sight made her realize anew how urgent it was to find her sister—before she got herself into trouble. “Have you seen her?” she repeated, allowing the impatience to show in her voice. “If she isn’t here I’ll have to look elsewhere.”

His smile had vanished as if it had never been, and he looked suddenly unsettled. “You don’t mean Charity Fairweather, do you? Little blonde, about so high?” His hand indicated a height just shorter than Mercy’s own five feet five inches.

Mercy gasped. “Yes, but how do you know her last name? Please, do you know where she is? I must find her right away!”

She heard him swear under his breath. “I had a feelin’ in my bones she was trouble,” he muttered. He took her by the arm—gently enough, but without waiting for her assent. “I think I can find her. Come with me,” he commanded grimly, and headed for the door.

In a few rapid strides he had taken her out of the saloon and under the starry midnight sky. But Sam Devlin did not seem inclined to stop and stargaze. He seemed to have caught her sense of urgency, for she had to nearly run to keep up with him as he rounded the corner and went into the alley that ran behind the Alamo. His spurs made a clinkclinking sound as he strode along.

“Mr. Devlin, please!” she said, panting a little. “Where are you taking me?” It was possible he didn’t know where Charity was at all, she realized, and was merely luring her out into the dark for his own nefarious purposes…

He paused and looked back. “Sorry,” he said, and the moonlight lit up his faint smile. “Forgot you didn’t come equipped with long legs, too.” He indicated his own, which were very long indeed.

She started as they neared a mass huddled up against the back of the building, a mass that writhed and shifted, panted and moaned. Devlin hesitated and peered at the shape, which seemed oblivious to their presence. “Just a courting couple,” he reassured her as he walked her rapidly past it.

Then, when they had reached the far end of the alley, she heard something that sounded like ripping cloth, followed by a squeal of outrage and a ringing slap. Then they heard a girl’s voice—a familiar one to Mercy—cry out, “Now, stop that! Stop that right now, you hear me? Gentlemen do not behave that way!”

“Charity?” Mercy started toward the sound, but not before she heard a man laugh and then say in an amused drawl, “Now, honey, jes’ what gave you the idea I was a gentleman? Now, settle down and give me some more o’ those sugar-sweet lips, sugar—”

Devlin lunged forward at the man’s voice, and a second later Mercy saw him pulling a shorter man out of the shadows. “Let her go, Culhane,” he muttered.

“Aw, boss, what d’ you mean, interruptin’ our spoonin’

like that? I was makin’ out jes’ fine till you came along,” whined the cowboy, pushing back a few strands of tousled yellow hair from his forehead.

“It didn’t sound like it,” Devlin retorted. “Sounded like you weren’t pleasin’ the lady a’tall. Miss, are you all right?” he called into the deep shadows that still hid the girl.

“I…I th-think so,” came a quivery voice.

“Charity!” Mercy cried as the younger girl emerged from the indistinct darkness, clutching the torn ends of her ripped bodice together.

Mercy had only a second to stare at her sister’s disheveled hair, swollen lips and frightened face before Charity hurtled into her arms, weeping.

“Hey, what’s goin’ on here?” the cowboy protested. “Me and the gal, we was jes’ havin’ some fun, boss, I swear it!”

“Oh, Mercy, thank God! I’m so glad you camel” Charity cried against her. “Mercy, I was so afraid! That man, he was going to—he was gonna—”

“Shh,” Mercy soothed her sister. “It’s all right, you’re safe now…” Over her sobbing sister’s head she stared at the two men, wondering what would happen next.

“The girl wasn’t what you thought she was, Tom. She’s just fifteen. Now get on back to the Drover’s Cottage and call it a night,” Devlin commanded.

“But boss—”

“You made a mistake, Culhane,” growled Devlin. “Go on, now. You’re disturbin’ the ladies.”

Culhane started moving, but he fired one last parting shot as he stumbled unsteadily past them. “Huh! She ain’t no lady—I guess I know a whore when I see one! She was kissin’ me real sweet till you came along…”

“Culhane, shut up and get out of here!” Devlin snapped, and applied his boot to the cowboy’s backside to add emphasis.

After watching the Texan banish his drover, Mercy busied herself with wrapping her shawl around Charity’s shoulders, covering her torn bodice. She shushed her sister’s tearful efforts to apologize. There’d be time for that later, but not now, not in front of Sam Houston Devlin, who had now turned back to them and was watching her with hooded, speculative eyes.

“We can’t thank you enough, Mr. Devlin,” she said, trying not to betray the trembling she badly wanted to give in to herself. Charity might well have been raped if the Texan hadn’t found her then. And how had he known where to find her? She hoped there’d be time later to discover that, too. But for now all she wanted to do was to escape the Texan’s knowing gaze and get home and into bed before Papa noticed they were missing.

“Sam, Miss Mercy. The name is Sam, and it was my pleasure to assist you,” he added in that rich, Southern drawl that poured like honey over her heart. “Is she—is she all right? I apologize for my drover’s crude behavior, ma’am. He’s just in off the trail and got a little liquored up tonight. He thought…he thought she was…” He hesitated.

“A whore?” Mercy supplied, inwardly flinching at a word she’d never said out loud before. “No, she’s not. She’s just a foolish girl who didn’t know what she was getting into, I’m afraid. And now,” she concluded in brisk tones, “we must say good-night, and thank you again. Charity?” she prompted.

Charity lifted her head from her sister’s breast. “Ththank you, Mr. Devlin…”

They started to walk away, but Sam Devlin started after them. “I’ll escort you back to your rooms, Miss Mercy,” he informed her. “Wouldn’t want you to meet up with any more drunken cowboys on your way.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Mercy said quickly. She sure didn’t want to take the chance of having Papa look out the window and see them with a stranger! Why, the clink-clink of his spurs might be just the sort of unfamiliar noise that was liable to wake their father. Then she realized how unfriendly she had sounded, and after Devlin had saved her sister from a fate worse than death, too!

She paused. “That is, I appreciate your offer, Mr. Devlin, but we really don’t live far. Please, don’t let us trouble you any further…”

She had forgotten about the Southern sense of chivalry. “Oh, it’s no trouble, Miss Mercy,” he assured her, that impudent grin back on his face.

“No, really, Mr. Devlin—Sam,” she amended as she saw he was about to correct her. “I—I really don’t want you to. I need to speak to my sister—alone.”

“Well, all right,” he said reluctantly. “Could I—could I just speak to you a moment, before you go?” He looked at her, then at Charity, and while Mercy was trying to find the words that would send him away, yet not rudely, Charity spoke up.

“I’ll just stand over here, Mercy,” she said, pointing to a place a little way up the street. “Go ahead and listen to Mr. Devlin—it’s the least you can do after what he did for us.”

Mercy was too surprised at her sister’s sudden return of composure to argue, and stood still as her sister walked out of earshot, yet where she could still easily be seen in the moonlight.

A wandering night breeze kissed Mercy’s neck as she turned back to Devlin, and she was suddenly aware of her exposed neckline, now that Charity was wearing the paisley shawl. She sensed the Texan was aware of it, too, though she hadn’t actually caught him looking. But he gave her no time to worry about it.

“I’m sorry the evenin’ turned out the way it did, Miss Mercy,” he said. “I’d like to ask you to supper.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” she said, looking away from the eyes that had gone gleaming black in the darkness. “There’s no need for any further ap—”

“I’m not askin’ you ‘cause I want to apologize for Culhane,” he interrupted, smiling faintly down at her. “If you’ll remember rightly, I’d just asked you if you wanted a drink when we…when we were interrupted. I was intendin’ all along to work up to askin’ you to supper,” he finished with a boyish grin that made her knees suddenly feel like that jelly she’d made, the batch that had never quite jelled. Like water.

Of course, there was no way she could say yes. Papa would lock her in her bedroom for a month before he’d ever let her spend five minutes in the company of a…a Texas cowboy! To him they were the same as Satan himself.

“Please?” he appealed, actually having the nerve to take her hand and squeeze it a little. “I’d sure like to take you to the hotel and give you a nice supper, if only just to prove all Texans aren’t ravening wolves.”

It was so near the image Papa had painted of them that she had to laugh. And all at once she realized that she very much wanted to go to supper with this Texan with the winning smile and wicked blue eyes. Just once…

“All right, Mr. Devlin—Sam,” she heard herself saying. “I’d be pleased to have supper with you.”

Chapter Five

Sam was whistling as he strolled over to the Drover’s Cottage after watching Mercy and her sister walk away down the street. The night hadn’t turned out so badly, after all. He’d met Mercedes LaFleche, the subject of the cardsharp’s dare, and he had an appointment to take her to supper tomorrow evening at nine o’clock.

This evening, he corrected himself with a grin, realizing it was after midnight. By the time the clock struck midnight again, he would have had an enjoyable supper with a beautiful woman whose sister he had rescued—a chivalrous act that should weigh heavily in his favor—and if his luck held, by the next morning he just might already have won the wager.

“Mercy, Mercy, have mercy,” he mused aloud, grinning all over again as he remembered how her green eyes had flashed sparks at him for making a play on words with her name. So her real name is Fairweather, hmm? Yet she goes by Mercy, rather than Mercedes… The sparks—of anger? of challenge?—hadn’t dismayed him. Sam liked a woman to have some fire in her nature. It usually made the time in bed a lot more worthwhile, and the morning after a hell of a lot more interesting.

So her sister wasn’t a prostitute—yet, he amended. His quick impression of Charity Fairweather, made when she had been sitting at the table with the boys and himself and flirting with all of them, was that the foolish little blonde was the natural harlot, not Mercy. Still, Charity’s distress at Culhane’s pawing had seemed genuine enough. But you could never tell with sporting women. It may have just been a matter of her asking more money than Tom wanted to pay.

What was clear enough to Sam, though, was that Mercy didn’t want her sister in the business, and to him that indicated a basic goodness in her that he found very likable. He thought he would enjoy their little supper tomorrow, quite apart from considerations of winning the bet.

He hoped she’d wear that green dress again, or something like it. The neckline of that dress had been just high enough to make her look like a lady, so that he could take her to dinner at Abilene’s one respectable hotel, and just low enough to hint at the delights that awaited him later. Farther down, its silken folds had clung lovingly to a slender waistline above enticingly feminine hips. He liked the fact, too, that she didn’t seem to paint her face like the other sporting women did; in fact, unless he missed his guess, Mercy’s face was completely clear of paint. But then, some women didn’t need paint to make them appealing, and perhaps this woman was one of the few who realized that fact. Though not classically beautiful, she was pretty in her own way.

She had told him she would meet him at the hotel. She hadn’t wanted him to come and escort her from her rooms above the Alamo, and he wondered why. He didn’t think she was worried about him seeing some other well-satisfied customer leaving her. Most saloon girls didn’t start working, so to speak, until later in the evening.

Was it possible she was attracted to him, and saw his invitation to dinner as romantic, rather than just business? If so, she might not want to remind him of what she was by having him pick her up at her place of employment. He hoped that was the reason, and his hope had little to do with the money he had a chance to regain by succeeding with the lovely Mercedes.