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  PHOEBE’S VALENTINE

  By Alice Duncan

  Phoebe’s Valentine

  Copyright © 2010 by Alice Duncan

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Art by Debi DeSantis

  www.debidesantis.com/book_covers.html

  Smashwords edition November 29, 2010

  Visit aliceduncan.net

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Chapter One

  Somewhere in Texas, Summer, 1870

  Phoebe Honeycutt sat on a boulder in the dubious shade of a scraggly tree and wished she had not laced her corset quite so tightly. She was perspiring like a field hand, knew she was getting a rash, and where her cornstarch had got itself off to, she had no idea. Her two wards, William and Sarah, dabbled their feet in the water of an almost infinitesimal stream trickling feebly several feet away.

  That wretched stream with its foul-tasting alkali water was the reason they were stranded here in this horrid place with nothing to see for miles but scrub, boulders, and ridiculous trees like this one. How was she supposed to know the mules couldn’t be trusted not to wander off if she and her wards stepped down for a drink?

  “Stupid mules.” Phoebe inched over on her boulder to chase the paltry shade afforded by her tree’s skinny branches. Her veil was hot, but necessary, so she did not even consider removing it.

  For the life of her, Phoebe couldn’t imagine why God ever created such an absurd creature as a mule. Or such a poor excuse for a tree. She patted her damp throat with a once-scented hankie. The only thing she could smell now was dust.

  “Be careful, children,” she called to her wards. “And, Sarah, darling, I expect you’d better come over here out of the sun or you’ll get those awful spots.”

  Twelve-year-old William hollered back, “Don’t matter none, Pheeb. We’re lost in the middle of nowhere. Ain’t nobody around to see if she’s got spots or not.”

  Phoebe discovered herself frowning and stopped immediately. Frowning, according to Mama, was the shortest path to wrinkles. And, while in her heart of hearts she feared William was right, Phoebe would not give in to despair.

  Generations of proper Honeycutt belles peered over her shoulder in approval when she called back, “My name to you, William, is Aunt Phoebe, and Sarah will certainly care when we are rescued from our predicament. And for heaven’s sake, mind your grammar!”

  William gave an inelegant snort. Phoebe allowed herself one discouraged sigh before straightening again and assuming her proper role.

  “William!”

  “Yes, Aunt Phoebe,” the disgruntled youngster muttered.

  Then he gave his sister a big splatter from the stream to make up, Phoebe knew, for her words of censure.

  “William got me all wet, Aunt Phoebe!” cried eight-year-old Sarah. She began to weep piteously.

  “It’s all right, Sarah, dear. I believe the two of you should come over here and rest for a while.” She patted the giant boulder invitingly, and the children abandoned the dribble of stream.

  Phoebe sighed as the boy and girl dragged themselves over to her rock. How she ever thought she could take care of Pauline’s children she didn=t know. She smoothed the blanket she had spread to save her skirt from dirt and those dreadful ants that seemed to crawl everywhere.

  “There, children, sit down and be a little lady and gentleman. I’m just sure as anything some noble soul will come to our rescue soon.”

  Phoebe was sure of no such thing, but she didn’t want to alarm the children. William’s doubtful, “Uh-huh,” was not encouraging.

  They had not sat under their tree for more than another hour, however, when William’s excited voice jerked Phoebe out of an exhausted doze.

  “Aunt Phoebe! Aunt Phoebe! Look! It’s a man!”

  “Thank God,” whispered Phoebe.

  For the space of only a heartbeat tears of gratitude threatened. But Phoebe was made of stern stuff. She sniffed her unseemly tears back into their proper place, out of sight, at once.

  Peering in the direction of William’s grubby finger, at first she thought he was mistaken, and her heart gave a gigantic lurch of dismay. Then, sure enough, shimmering in the heat as though he were riding toward them through a film of water, came a vision welcome enough to make her sing.

  “Oh, William. He’s on a horse and everything.”

  “It’s a pretty horse,” Sarah piped up.

  “Well, of course, he’s on a horse.” It sounded as though William considered his two female relatives’ comments both silly and predictable. “How else can a body get around in Texas?”

  “I am unaware of the modes of travel prevalent in Texas, William,” Phoebe said repressively. “But I’ll thank you to remember your manners.”

  “Yes’m.”

  Phoebe decided to ignore the tongue Sarah stuck out at her brother. Then she slid from her perch on the rock, smoothed her skirt, straightened her hat, adjusted her veil, and offered the children one last admonishment before she stepped away from the tree to stand in the path of the oncoming rider. “Stay there, children. If this should be an individual of improper character, we shall have to wait for someone else.”

  “Who else is goin’ to come this way, Aunt Phoebe?” William sounded positively disgusted.

  “I have no idea, William, but I don’t intend to put our welfare in the hands of another creature like that awful Mr. Basteau.”

  As a precaution, Phoebe fingered the derringer she kept in the pocket of her skirt. She couldn’t aim to shoot it worth a bucket of spit, but she didn’t figure an adversary needed to know that.

  # # #

  Except for the combined facts that it was hotter than hell itself and he detested Texas, Jack Valentine was not finding his trip to Santa Fe too miserable. He’d concluded a spectacular business deal in Austin; his horse, Lucky Strike, seemed to be holding up well; he had plenty of provisions; and his skill at cards had provided him ample funds for the journey. Jack considered the latter a blessing because it had saved him the time and bother of wiring his banker in San Francisco for a draft.

  He scowled when he detected the veiled figure standing in his path. “Looks like our fortunes might have turned, Lucky.”

  The horse did not respond.

  This was a first. Jack had encountered any number of footpads and desperate characters in his colorful career. Never before had he been held up by a veiled woman. What was the world coming to?

  Casually, he pulled his thin duster back so his gun was exposed and within easy reach. It took him only a moment to ascertain that the safety straps securing his saddle pistols were unlatched. One knife resided in his boot scabbard, the other had been tucked into a sheath strapped to his back, and his hide out derringer nestled safely in his sleeve pocket. All was well.

  Jack scanned the spare countryside around the figure, trying to determine where her accomplices were hiding themselves.

  He didn’t see any. Instead, he discerned two pint sized children sitting on a boulder in the shade of a spindly mesquite tree, looking uncomfortable and red-faced with heat. Both were dressed as if for a party. Jack took another squint at the figure before him and decided she was, too.

  “What the hell’s going on, Lucky?”

  He pulled the large black beast to a stop several yards away from the woman and
did not speak to her. Instead, he folded his gloved hands over his saddle horn in a negligent pose that belied his intense attention and waited for the figure to speak to him.

  When it did, he was sorry it had. Her voice rang out across the desert heat and slapped his ears in an accent he’d hoped never to hear again in this life.

  To him her words sounded like, “Oh, Suh! Ah beg you to help us in our ouwah of despayah.”

  Jack cringed.

  “What seems to be the trouble, ma’am?” He sounded about as disinterested as he felt. Yet Jack Valentine was not a man who could see a lady in distress and not at least try to help her, no matter how damned southern she was.

  “Oh, Suh, ouah mules got away from us and rayan rahght off with ouah wagon. The two dahlin’ children and Ah have been strayanded heah evah since.”

  Jack eyed her with distaste. “Did you set the brake?”

  There was the barest hint of hesitation before the woman’s tiny, “Brake?” rippled over the heat waves to him.

  Jack bowed his head and shook it in disgust. Great God in heaven. He thought he’d left the Old South behind in ashes at the end of the cursed war. But no. It seemed determined to dog his steps and make him miserable wherever he went.

  “Wait here.” He barked the command without a thought to politeness and nudged Lucky Strike into a walk again. “It shouldn’t be too hard to follow the tracks of a wagon and a couple of mules.”

  “But, Suh,” the creature said uncertainly. She lifted a hand as if to stop him, but Jack ignored her. He was pretty sure she was unhappy with him as he rode off, and he didn’t give a care.

  Almost at once he spotted the wagon tracks. “There they are, Lucky. The mules must have headed straight to the river. Have more brains than that female back there.”

  Again Lucky Strike kept his own counsel.

  # # #

  “What happened, Aunt Phoebe?”

  “I’m not sure, William.” Phoebe stared after the black-haired man on his big black horse and wished she knew the answer to her nephew’s question. “I—I believe he’s going to rescue us, though.”

  Sarah began to whimper, and Phoebe put on her resolute, auntish face. “None of that, Sarah. We possess a firmer character than that. A Honeycutt female does not weep in the face of danger.”

  “We’re Finnertys, Aunt Phoebe,” William reminded her.

  “Your mama was a Honeycutt, William, and that makes you one too. And don’t you ever forget it.”

  William appeared to recognize that voice of his aunt’s. He said, “Yes, ma’am,” and shut his mouth.

  Not for the world and everything in it would Phoebe let the children know how upsetting she had found her encounter with that taciturn stranger. It wasn’t only that he was so silent and rude. There was something else about him, too. Perhaps it was his swarthy complexion or the hard look he had about the eyes. Or it might have been his alarming mustache. It outlined lips much too sensual for Phoebe’s comfort.

  And his hair. Well, it was simply a disgrace the way his hair had been allowed to grow so long and luxurious that it curled around the collar of his duster and shimmered like onyx beneath his hat. In her youth Phoebe would have killed for hair like that.

  And he was so very large.

  Phoebe disapproved, and an eloquent shiver passed through her. It was shocking what he made her feel. It was . . . it was most unpleasant.

  By the time William’s acute ears picked up the sound of clopping hooves and the crunch of wheels rolling over dry ground, Phoebe was in an almost hand wringing state of agitation. Then her heart soared and she breathed a silent prayer of thanks for their salvation.

  “Wait here, children,” she commanded as she slid off the boulder once more.

  In spite of her stays and her upbringing, Phoebe ran to meet the stranger as he brought their wagon back to them. “Oh, sir, I don’t know how to thank you! Our gratitude simply cannot be measured. I didn’t know what in the name of heaven we were going to do! Where were they?”

  “Down by the river.”

  He sounded disgusted, as if she should have known that. Phoebe would have taken exception to his attitude if his words had not amazed her so. “There’s a river nearby?”

  Her question seemed to annoy him further. He didn’t answer, but rather swung himself down from his horse and strode toward her. Phoebe had to fight the urge to shrink back when he planted himself squarely in front of her, legs braced upon the sandy earth, arms akimbo, big fists knotted against lean hips.

  “All right, lady, what’s going on? What the hell are you doing out here, alone, on the Texas plains with a wagon and team and a couple of kids if you don’t even know how to drive the wagon or where the hell the damned river is?”

  Phoebe felt a shock of mortification at his blasphemous language. “How dare you speak to me so, sir? I had believed you to be a gentleman when you rescued our wagon for us, but to speak in such a manner—and in front of the children!—is behavior bordering on the insufferable!”

  She turned, intending to storm away from him, but found herself jerked around by a grip that felt like steel digging into her flesh. She squeaked in pain and surprise and then felt foolish.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going now, lady?”

  “I do not choose to remain in the company of any person who is so lost to decorum that he uses foul language in front of a lady and two innocent children, sir.”

  Phoebe was scared now and found it difficult to maintain her air of defiance. Her breeding did not fail her, though. Although her face flamed beneath her veil and her bosom heaved above her too-tight corset, she stood her ground, tough as a hundred-year-old magnolia tree.

  “This is Texas, lady. It’s a big place and it’s not very damned hospitable to delicate southern ladies. If you don’t even know where the water is, you’re sure as the devil not going to get another ten miles, much less to wherever it is you’re headed. What the hell are you doing out here alone anyway?”

  Phoebe clamped her lips together and decided that if he was going to be this rude, she would simply not deal with him at all. That would teach him.

  Unfortunately for her, this man apparently did not understand the first thing about polite behavior. Instead of recognizing her scruples, apologizing for his foul language, and then softening his attitude, he took her by the shoulders and shook her.

  “Well? Where do you think you’re headed? Do you have supplies? Protection? There are Comanches around here, you know. Do you have any idea what they’d do to you if they found you?”

  He was bellowing now. Not only did his loud voice hurt Phoebe’s ears, but his words nearly made her faint. On the other hand, it might have been her corset.

  “C-C-Comanches?”

  He didn’t bother to reply.

  It was William who called from his perch on the boulder, “Mr. Basteau was drivin’ us, sir, but Phoebe got us up in the middle of the night last night and said as to how we had to leave without him.”

  The boy’s comment brought the stranger’s gaze from Phoebe’s veiled face to the rock where William was trying to behave and be brave at the same time. The two behaviors were not necessarily compatible, but William knew Phoebe would skin him if he got off the boulder and rushed to her rescue.

  “Did you say Basteau?”

  William nodded and the stranger’s brow crinkled ferociously. He glared at Phoebe.

  “Did he say Basteau?”

  This time Phoebe nodded, furious. She was, however, having trouble catching her breath.

  “Yves Basteau? From Louisiana?”

  Another sharp nod from Phoebe, who was definitely feeling faint now.

  “You set out to cross Texas in the company of Yves Basteau?”

  In spite of her precarious physical condition, Phoebe snapped, “Are you hard of hearing as well as a brute, sir?”

  He scowled at her, and she had to fight for her courage. He was such a large, alarming man.

  “No, madam,
I am not hard of hearing, but apparently you’re even more of a fool than I took you for in the first place. Yves Basteau is the foulest bastard ever spawned in the state of Louisiana. How you believed you could trust your welfare and that of those two ‘innocent children,’ as you’re so fond of calling them, to a piece of filth like Yves Basteau is beyond me.”

  “We didn’t know the man was a villain when we hired him, sir.” It was a difficult confession for her to make, but it was the truth.

  Although Phoebe would have thought it impossible, the stranger’s glare got even hotter.

  “I hate like hell not being able to see who I’m talking to. What in hell are you wearing that damned veil for?”

  Phoebe lifted her chin and told him coldly, “I do not wish to damage my complexion, sir.”

  Jack’s frown carved two deep ruts alongside his mouth. “Stop being such a blasted fool, lady. Take that veil off right now and tell me who the hell you are.”

  Defeat, black and bitter, washed over Phoebe. She’d been trying so hard to make her way in this difficult world and to provide a home for William and Sarah. Yet it seemed that every time she turned around, she ran into another peril. After what she’d gone through with Yves Basteau, she had no doubt about this rude stranger’s assessment of their former guide’s character. And here she thought she’d been so clever. Well, they were in the soup now, and at this awful man’s mercy. There didn’t seem to be anything to do but obey his command.

  With a discouraged shake of her head, she untied her veil and lifted it up.

  Jack caught the tiniest glimpse of a full pink mouth and a pair of wide-set, long-lashed, brown eyes, as big and round as two-dollar gold pieces and set into a face of the creamiest ivory, before those pretty brown eyes rolled up, the thick lashes fluttered twice, and a tiny sigh escaped the lovely lips. The face slipped out of view. He barely caught her before she hit the dirt.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  He scooped her up and marched her over to the boulder. When he got her there, he tried to restrain his temper so as not to frighten the children. “Better get up so we can spread that blanket out, kids. We’ll have to lay the lady down and see what’s wrong with her.”