Reckless

“In Mexico, my dear lady,” he corrected. “I haven’t the stamina that a trek up the Amazon entails. Dealing with bandits in the mountains of Sonora was quite chilling enough.”

“Bandits! Good heavens!” Mrs. Carillo gasped. “However did you get involved with them?”

Wyn listened with half an ear as Deegan spun out a tale that she was quite sure he made up as he went along. Since he worked Blackhawk into the scenario, she wondered if the two men would meet later to coordinate their stories.

Blackhawk, she had found as the captain drew him out, told just as hair-raisingly improbable tales, a good many of them featuring Deegan as his companion in arms. Of course, he was far less sensational in the telling than the dramatic Galloway. She felt it had something to do with the baron’s delivery. The adventure, when retold in the careless, drawling affectation he had assumed at the captain’s appearance earlier, took on the mantle of a tedious trial endured with a stiff upper lip. She was quite sure that, like Deegan’s tales, not a single word bore the least resemblance to the truth.

“You hid from savages in a cave overnight, then in the morning discovered a fabulous vein of gold ran directly above your head?” Hildy demanded, her blue eyes sparkling with excitement as she gazed at Blackhawk. “Did you immediately file a claim, my lord?”

“Bother the gold,” Captain Kittrick snorted. “However did you escape the savages?”

Wyn sampled her soup and let the conversation wash over her.

She should have been prepared. Having Blackhawk at the captain’s table practically insured that the company would be agog. She’d seen her keenly republican neighbors in San Francisco become overnight royalists when a traveler with an old-world title arrived in the city. It had happened again that evening as the captain made the introductions. He’d barely let Blackhawk’s name trip from his tongue before Mr. Mosby, the young man seated next to Miss Carillo, had stammered that he’d heard of the baron. Even Blackhawk’s sardonically lifted eyebrow had not stemmed the flow after that. Eyes aglow with something like hero worship, Mr. Mosby had asked about a mine in Brazil. That had put Mr. Carillo in mind of a rumor of a rail line Blackhawk was said to have been involved with founding somewhere in Mexico. Mrs. Carillo remembered hearing a friend tell of an incident involving the Blackhawk name in Egypt a few years ago, although she had not been able to bring the details readily to mind. Hers had been the only statement that neither Blackhawk nor Deegan had seen fit to expand upon thus far.

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