My Darling Gunslinger Read Free

reviled—had finally brought the truth of Nanny’s words home to her.
    Charlotte had headed for high ground more times than she could count and had finally learned to frolic in the shallows with an abandon her friends and family left behind in England and Prussia who, had they had the opportunity to witness it, would have likely labeled improper, hoydenish, and bohemian.
    Truth be told, had her family and friends spied Charlotte on a London or Berlin street, they likely would not have recognized her. The plump little girl who’d learned to play chess at the knee of Archduke Leopold of Dresdenstein, the young lady who’d been more comfortable with a book or a puzzle to solve than surrounded by her illustrious family in crowded ballrooms or staterooms, the debutant with eyes too big for her pale face who’d dutifully married an earl little more than a stranger, no longer existed.
    On a blistering cold day in November, Charlotte stepped down from a private railway car onto the snow covered platform of the train station in Mystic, Montana. With one gloved hand she held a battered leather portmanteau, with the other she grasped the small hand of her son.
    Charlotte looked around the platform, her eyes traveling over the dozen or so people milling about in the bright winter sunlight. She let her gaze pass over a weary woman rounding up two small children, around an elderly couple bidding farewell to a wiry boy in a dark suit two sizes too big, and beyond a one-legged man wearing a tattered blue uniform leaning on a rough-hewn crutch.
    She searched out strong, healthy men and found four on the platform and another three in the street beyond. Two of the four on the platform appeared to be well-to-do travelers waiting to board the westbound train. Another was a cowboy if his spurred boots and leather chaps were any indication. The fourth man seemed to be a businessman of some sort, dressed smartly in a well-tailored gray coat, black waistcoat and trousers. His dark hair was brushed back from a narrow face, a mustache neatly trimmed above thin lips. He wore no gun that Charlotte could see and held his thin frame in a relaxed fashion, with one hand tucked into a pocket of his trousers and the other holding a gold watch that glittered in the afternoon sun.
    She turned her attention to the three men in the street. Two were standing beside an old buckboard wagon, their blond heads bent close as they talked in an animated fashion. To Charlotte, they looked to be farmers, or perhaps sheep herders—young and strong with smooth faces and ham-sized hands.
    The final man captured her attention and held it. He looked to be an outlaw straight off the pages of the dime store novels she’d read on the journey west. He wore a battered dark hat without adornment and a long black duster that flapped around him in the breeze like a crow’s wings. His face was dark and angular beneath a shadow of whiskers, his brown hair trailing dirty and matted almost to his broad shoulders. A gun belt rode low around his narrow hips, two pearl-handled revolvers tucked into the holsters.
    Charlotte couldn’t see his eyes in the shadow of the hat’s brim, but she suspected they would be dark and empty.
    He leaned back against a hitching post, a spotted horse tied loosely to the railing beside him. One hand held a brown cheroot which he slowly brought to his lips, the other caressed the butt of his revolver. His eyes drifted over the small crowd on the platform, never alighting in one place long, taking in the entirety of the scene in much the same way Charlotte had.
    She recognized him for what he was. A predator, a professional assassin or perhaps a bounty hunter. He was on the trail of someone and Charlotte sent up a silent prayer for the soul of the person unlucky enough to be his prey.
    Then she sent up another in gratitude that she was not that person. And, more importantly, she gave thanks that her six-year-old son Sebastian was not this dark, empty-eyed