Quicksilver's Catch

Chapter Three

The crowded stagecoach was another new experience for Amanda. She thought she rather liked it. Well, except for the stifling heat and the cramped quarters and more dust than she’d ever dreamed existed, all of which combined to intensify the now cloying scent of vanilla that she had tried so hard to rub off at the depot after being compared to bakery goods.

She and Marcus—he’d introduced himself at last, saying, “Well, Miss Alice Green, I go by Marcus Quicksilver"—had been the last ones to board the stage, and as a consequence they hadn’t been able to sit together, which irritated Amanda at first, but now was pleasing her enormously, because it allowed her to look long and hard at the handsome man who had offered her his assistance, albeit grudgingly. Well, she could hardly expect eastern gallantry from such a rugged-looking, gunbeltwearing, unshaven westerner, she reminded herself.

The minute they settled into their opposite seats, Marcus had tipped his hat down and, to all appearances, fallen fast asleep. Amanda perused what she could see of his face—the dark whiskers shadowing his cheeks and jaw, the hard curve of his mouth, which hardly slackened in sleep, the sculpted tip of his nose. Her gaze kept drifting lower, to the place where the button was missing on his chambray shirt, where a hint of soft, dark hair showed through the open placket between the edges of his leather vest.

Each time she peeked, a little curl of longing unfurled in the pit of her stomach. That, too, was a sensation she’d never felt before, but then, she’d never seen a man’s bare chest before, either. She wondered if Angus was similarly furry, and rather hoped so. Not that it mattered. Not one whit. Only…

“Sorry if I’m crowding you, honey. It’s these wide shoulders of mine, you know. They don’t make coaches for fellas built like me.”

Amanda smiled weakly at the man sitting to her right. Sitting on her right was really a much better description, considering that the large man had a good portion of her skirt beneath him. She edged a bit closer to the window on her left, and could have sworn the man followed her over, crunching additional yardage of her skirt beneath him as he moved.

“I go by train ordinarily,” he said—as if she had inquired. “More room for my samples and such. I’m a salesman, you know. Ladies’ undergarments.” A wet laugh burbled up in his throat. “Unmentionables, you know.”

Amanda glanced sideways at her seatmate, whose breath smelled of peppermint and onions, an altogether unpleasant mixture, particularly when combined with her own vanilla scent. A pair of muttonchop whiskers flourished on the man’s cheeks. His plaid suit and paisley vest could have clothed a small family, with enough fabric left over to drape and swag an end table. She offered the coolest of smiles, along with a polite little hum, to acknowledge that she’d heard him and to discourage any further mention of unmentionables.

“Yeah,” he said, obviously indifferent to her chilly response. “Been in this business going on five years now. The name’s Linus Dobson.” He stuck out a huge, hammy hand. “Glad to make your acquaintance.” Then he winked as he added in a decidedly smarmy tone, “And may I say you smell ever so good, honey?”

Unwilling to be rude, especially in such close quarters, Amanda clasped his hand. It was flabby and damp as suet. “How do you do?”

He smiled broadly. “I do all right, if I do say so myself. So. If you don’t mind my asking, what’s a pretty girl like yourself doing traveling all alone? Visiting relatives, are you?”

“Well, no. Actually, I’m…” Extracting her hand from his with a determined tug, Amanda cast about in her brain, desperate for a reply. What was she doing traveling alone, other than running away? His guess, she concluded, was as good as any she might invent for herself, so she nodded and said, “Yes, I am visiting relatives, as a matter of fact. A sister and brother-in-law and five nieces and nephews. In… um… Wyoming.”

“Pretty country, Wyoming. I’ve been there quite a bit myself. Why, given the opportunity, I bet I could show you some sights that’d be like none you’d ever seen before.” He wedged his elbow into her rib cage then, adding, “Snap your garters, for sure, little lady.”

“My, my.” It would have been nice to have a book in which to bury her nose, Amanda thought, but since she didn’t, and since there was no entertainment other than staring at Marcus Quicksilver’s chest, she decided to indulge her hammy companion. She’d had few opportunities to converse with members of the opposite sex, much less to twit one of them. In her estimation, Linus Dobson could do with a bit of twitting.

She smiled and batted her eyes at him. “My goodness. Snap my garters, would they?”

“Yes, indeedy. Why, honey, you might think you’ve seen some natural wonders back east, but I’m here to tell you—”

He didn’t get a chance to tell her anything right then, because the stage lurched to a squealing, bone-rattling standstill.

“Stretch stop!” the driver shouted. “Everybody out who’s getting out. Five minutes you got, and not one second more.”

“Well, I’m for that,” the big salesman said as he reached across Amanda’s lap to open the door. “Pardon me, honey.” He stepped on her skirt and both of her feet before he squeezed himself out of the coach, then he turned and held out his meaty hands. “Let’s go, honey. Here. Let me help you.”

“Everybody out!” the driver called again, more insistently this time. Gracious, Amanda would have thought the vehicle was on fire, the way the man was yelling.

By now the other passengers had all obediently exited the coach through the opposite door. All but one. Marcus Quicksilver was still napping under the brim of his hat, and he didn’t even flinch when the driver banged on the sidewalls and bellowed another warning. “Four minutes now. Everybody out. Time’s a-wasting, and we ain’t stopping again till Sidney.”

Amanda sighed, deciding if she didn’t exit the coach immediately, the driver might be tempted to pull her out by the scruff of her neck. She levered herself up toward the open door, and before she could say, “No, thank you. I can manage on my own,” to the salesman, he had already clasped his big hands around her rib cage, with his sausagelike thumbs suspiciously close to her breasts.

“There you go, little lady.” He set her down on the ground, but didn’t let her go until he’d given her a lusty ten-fingered squeeze. “Well, if you’ll pardon me now, I believe I’ll just walk a ways and give the old limbs a good stretching.”

“Yes. Of course.” Good riddance. Amanda gave her bodice a tug and smoothed her hands across her wrinkled skirt. What a sight she must be, looking rather like a waffle now, while smelling like a cake.

“Don’t waste your time,” came a deep voice from behind her. “That skirt’s going to look a whole lot worse before it looks any better.”

She whirled around to see Marcus Quicksilver leaning against the side of the coach, eyeing her rather peculiarly before he bent and reached to pluck a weed from the side of the road.

“On the other hand, Miss Alice Green,” he drawled, “you could always have your fat friend sit on your skirt and get yourself a real good pressing.”

Marcus stuck the blade of grass between his teeth, irritated with himself because he was irritated with her. How Amanda Grenville carried on with fellow passengers—men in particular—shouldn’t have mattered to him one bit, as long as she didn’t give away her identity. How she cozied up to a seatmate or what she said shouldn’t have bothered Marcus. But it did. It irked him no end that she’d allow some peddler—some itinerant buffoon like that Dobson— to make advances. Didn’t she realize there would be consequences to her flirtatious behavior? Didn’t she care?

He kicked a boot into a wheel rim. Damnation. How did little Miss Amanda imagine she’d ever make it to Denver without getting caught if she took up with and made sport of every Tom, Dick, Harry and Linus along the way?

“I see your nap didn’t do anything to improve your disposition, Mr. Quicksilver,” she said, tilting her pointed little chin up into his face.

“Nope. My mood’s about as wrinkled as your skirt.” Marcus bit down harder on the weed. His head was starting to ache again, and he could feel a vein throbbing in his temple, threatening to burst. Not only was Amanda Grenville a spoiled brat, but now, on top of that, she was proving to be a careless and outrageous flirt. Everything about the little blonde had begun to nettle Marcus, and yet he found her impossible to ignore.

She dismissed him now, quite thoroughly and efficiently, the way a goddess would dismiss a mortal, with a brusque little cluck of her tongue. “I’ll be so glad to get my luggage when we arrive in Sidney,” she said, turning her full attention back to various pleats and folds of fabric.

“Uh-huh,” he answered noncommittally, thinking she did look a bit more bedraggled now than she had earlier today, when he first saw her skulking outside the depot in North Platte. Traveling, especially by stagecoach, tended to wear people down. Women in particular. This woman, who wasn’t used to prairie heat or road dust or old jolting coaches. She’d probably never gone anywhere without at least one maid to see to her every need and comfort.

And yet here she was with no one to take care of her. She’d run away from all that, hadn’t she? Or so the Wanted poster claimed. Marcus wondered why. Then he scowled and wondered why he wondered. What difference did it make why she’d abandoned a life of great wealth and perpetual ease? Once Marcus delivered her to her grandmother and collected his well-deserved five-thousand-dollar reward, he’d never see Amanda Grenville again, much less think of her.

He plucked the weed from his mouth, tossed it to the ground and went to see about Sarah B., who was tethered, and not too happily, either, to the back of the coach.

“Two minutes, folks,” the driver called down from his lofty perch, where he was all but invisible behind a blue cloud of cigarette smoke. “If we push it, we’ll be getting into Sidney just about dark.”

While Marcus readjusted Sarah B.’s bridle and reins, he spoke to the mare softly, apologizing to her for making her run behind a dust-making stage, promising her a warm stall and a fat bag of oats that night.

“Mmm… A fat bag of oats,” sounded a wistful voice close by. “I’m so hungry even that sounds delicious.”

Marcus gave a last yank to the knot in the reins, then braced his forearms on the mare’s neck. Bedraggled or not, Miss Amanda Grenville looked beautiful in the mellow light of late afternoon.

“When did you eat last?” he asked her, then watched while her smooth brow furrowed and her eyes turned a deeper, thoughtful green as she pondered his question.

“Yesterday. No. The day before that.” She gave a mournful little laugh. “To tell you the truth, Quicksilver, I’m not sure. But I know I must be famished if a bag of oats sounds appealing.”

“Here.” Marcus unbuckled his saddlebag and withdrew a piece of jerked beef. “This is a little better than oats.”

She took the mahogany-colored dried meat and stared at it a moment, turning it this way and that, before she looked back at Marcus. “What is this? Leather?”

“Edible leather. It’s beef jerky. Go ahead. Try it, brat. If it doesn’t fill you up, at least it’ll keep your mouth occupied for a while.”

She studied it some more, bending it, bringing it to her nose and sniffing it. Anyone would have thought he was trying to poison her, Marcus thought disgustedly. Ten to one she’d hand it back to him and refuse to even try it. He watched in silence, then, as her pretty mouth twitched and her front teeth tested the dessicated meat. She tugged at it like a terrier then, to no avail.

Marcus retrieved a second piece of jerky from his saddlebag. “Not that way,” he said. “Like this.” He clenched the tough morsel in his back teeth and ripped off a good-size portion, which he proceeded to chew.

“Oh.” She eyed the dried beef as if it were about to bite her back before she sank her molars into it and nearly growled as she sheared off a piece. Then she chewed. And chewed some more. Soon she was staring off into the distance, grinding her teeth as if that had become her lifelong occupation.

Marcus had never seen anyone quite so dogged about food. Or so unsuccessful. “Spit it out,” he told her.

“Mpht,” she answered.

He motioned toward a nearby clump of weeds. “Go on and spit it out before you wear down your damn teeth.”

She spat as if she’d never done that before, either, and walked back dabbing a hankie to her lips. “That was terrible,” she exclaimed. “I believe I’d prefer eating a roof shingle.”

“I expect a person has to develop a taste for jerked beef,” he said, more amused than apologetic. He wasn’t all that fond of jerked beef himself.

“Well, I’d much rather redevelop my taste for rare roast beef or oysters. Now those a person doesn’t even have to chew.” Her eyes lit up, and she smiled brightly. “Oh, do you suppose there will be a decent restaurant in Sidney?”

“Probably. Do you suppose you can afford to eat in it, brat?”

“Stop calling me that,” she snapped. “And yes, of course I can afford it, once I get my suitcase back. I might even consider treating you to supper, Quicksilver. What do you think of that?”

She spun around and walked away, treating Marcus to a view of her haughty backside. He shook his head. Actually, he thought they’d be lucky to eat a boiled egg on a slice of moldy bread this evening, but there was no point in telling her right now, then having to watch her sit and sulk for the next few hours till they arrived in Sidney. The duchess would find out soon enough that her suitcase was still riding the rails west, along with all the money in it.

As was customary on stagecoaches, all the passengers returned to their previous seats when the driver shouted that their stretch stop was over and that anybody who wasn’t back inside the vehicle in half a minute would be left behind. “No exceptions, ladies.”

Linus Dobson had lumbered back from his stroll just in time to offer Amanda a boost up into the coach, and then the burly oaf had trampled her toes once more before reclaiming his seat beside her. Marcus Quicksilver sat directly opposite from her again, and even though it was now somewhat dim inside the vehicle, he retreated once more beneath his hat brim.

Despite the gathering dark, however, Amanda still had a fairly good view of his half-open shirt, with its exceedingly distracting fur, which, at present, she found much more appealing than his personality. The next time he called her a brat, she decided, she’d show him just how contrary she could be, by launching her foot into his shinbone.

“Well, well. Here we are again,” Linus Dobson said, nudging her with an elbow while sending a moist breeze of peppermint and onions in her direction. “Say, I don’t believe I caught your name, honey.”

Here we are again, Amanda thought morosely. The gnawing sensation in her stomach had gotten worse after her attempt to chew the dessicated beef, and it didn’t help one bit when the hunger pangs were coupled with those peculiar flickers every time her eyes drifted below Marcus’s collarbone.

She was missing her grandmother, too, all of a sudden, which struck her as odd, when she was doing her best to escape the old woman’s clutches. But she’d lived with Honoria Grenville nearly all her life, ever since her parents—Joshua Grenville and his young wife—perished in a steamboat explosion while vacationing on the Rhine. Her grandmother had really been more like a mother to her for twenty years. She was a stubborn, overbearing mother, however, and one who refused to let Amanda make decisions for herself in even the smallest of matters.

But she had decided, hadn’t she? When she wound up quite by accident and quite alone in a carriage with the dashing Angus McCray, and when he proposed marriage on the spot, Amanda had accepted. Just like that. Her decision, she knew, had less to do with love than with independence, but her fiancé was a worldy and very handsome man, and Amanda was certain she would come to love him in time. Anyway, how could she love Angus? Good gracious, she barely knew him.

In all honesty, she probably knew her portly seatmate as well as she knew her fiancé. The salesman was poking his elbow in her ribs again.

“I said I didn’t quite catch your name, little lady,” he repeated.

She really ought to ignore him, she thought. He was being outrageously forward, even more so than before, and Amanda would have been perfectly justified in pretending to have suddenly gone deaf to his overtures. But she was eager to be distracted from the heat and dust in the coach, not to mention her growling stomach and Marcus Quicksilver’s intriguing chest. So she offered Linus Dobson a tiny, tempting smile.

“My name?” She blinked innocently. “Why don’t you try to guess?”

A small chuff of surprise caught in the peddler’s throat, and then an oily grin spread across his lips. “Oh, I see. You’re one of those that likes to play games, honey. All right. Let me get a real good look at you.” He poked his straw hat higher on his brow, then angled his head and narrowed his eyes, studying her. “You don’t strike me as a Jane or a Ruth. Not a Mary, either. Am I right?”

Amanda fashioned a smile that told him he was not only right, but amazingly clever to boot.

The salesman’s gaze roved from her face to her bodice, paused there for a long leer, then came back to her face. “You’re a tiny little female. Real delicate. Mind you, I can tell despite your ruffles and pleats, being in the business I’m in. Ladies’ underclothes, remember? But petite as you are, I’d be inclined to guess you’ve got a longish name.” He scratched one muttonchop thoughtfully. “Hmm… Elizabeth, maybe?”

“No.”

“Eleanor?”

Amanda shook her head.

“I’m getting warm, though. Right?”

Warm? Yes, Amanda thought the man was getting quite warm, actually. His beefy face was flushed a bright pink now, and several beads of sweat were glistening above his upper lip. Suddenly she didn’t think that playing a guessing game with this man had been such a good idea. First of all, he was coming frightfully close to her true name. And second— worse—Linus Dobson seemed to be playing an altogether different game now as he shifted his bulk in the seat and thrust a huge arm around Amanda’s shoulders, pulling her closer, very nearly crushing her against him while attempting to suffocate her with the scent of peppermint and onions.

“Whatever your name is, honey, you’re the prettiest little thing I’ve seen in weeks. What do you say when we get to Sidney, the two of us… well…” He bent his head and whispered, his hot, foul breath and indecent proposal both almost scorching Amanda’s ear.

She felt her jaw dropping and her mouth framing an indignant but speechless O. She couldn’t utter so much as a squeak, but as it turned out, she didn’t have to, because just then a low, lethal voice cut through the gathering dark inside the coach.

“How ‘bout changing seats with me, pal? I’d like to sit next to my wife.”

Linus Dobson moved fairly fast for a man of his enormous bulk. First he wrenched his arm from around Amanda and then he shoved up from the seat, hovering there all scrunched up in his huge plaid suit while Marcus—with catlike grace and speed—slid across the narrow aisle and into the space beside Amanda.