Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23
Standing beside the ornate brass bed in the second-floor bedroom Prince Hugo had accosted her in, Cally hurriedly secured to the sturdy, heavy-as-an-ox bedframe the fancy sheets she’d tied together, her gaze flickering between the knots she was making and the locked door, her heart beating fast. Would the Evil Prince come back real fast from meeting with his visitor, more interested in her than the fire that was a-burnin’ somewhere?
Would he come back before she could get away?
Outside, there was a mighty ruckus, folks yelling and screaming, a bell clanging hard, and she had a feeling it was due to her brother and Sheriff Sam and Max. Through the tall, wide window she’d opened as soon as the Evil Prince had hurried from the room, the scent of woodsmoke wafted in on the hot, still air from outside, wafting away the stink he’d left behind of his perfumed body, the stink of his breath when he’d dared to try to kiss her.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, though he hadn’t gotten close enough to actually get his mouth anywhere near hers. She’d lashed out with her boots, like Apollo would have with his hooves if he’d been in the room. She’d lashed out with her hands.
Apollo. She’d heard his whinnies of outrage as she’d been hauled into the back of the house.
Her own outrage grew, like it had when the Evil Prince had dared to try to touch her, outrage and the fear that had consumed her as she’d kicked and scratched and yelled.
She gave a tug to the knots holding the bedsheet to the bedframe. Nice and firm. She gathered up the tied-together sheets, two of them, plus the fancy embroidered bedspread, all knotted together, one after the other, and ran with them to the open window, the smell of smoke growing stronger.
In the hallway outside her door, a scuffle sounded, voices raised in anger, fists striking blows.
Cally caught her breath. Her heart pounding even faster, she flung the sheets and bedspread out the window.
They dropped to the empty, barren ground below along the north side of the house, the bottom one—the bedspread—brushing the dirt. Beyond the barren ground, a dense wood of pine beckoned, not a hundred feet away.
Across the room, she heard a key go into the lock on the other side of the door, then turn, the lock clicking open.
The doorknob moved.
She swung one foot over the windowsill and grasped the first sheet, tugging it again one more time to make sure it was secure, tugging it fast, hurry , she told herself, hurry , and she put her weight on the sheet and swung her second leg around?—
The door opened.
Max burst into the room.
Joy leaped through her gasping heart. Swinging her legs back inside, she ran to him and hugged him hard. “ Prince ,” she said, his familiar scent driving away the last of Evil Prince Hugo’s stink, then she let go of him fast. Her body full of fury and relief, she grabbed one of the pistols from his gun belt. “Come,” she said, her voice hard, and started toward the door he was swiftly closing behind him, one of the Evil Prince’s henchmen lying prone in the hallway. “Let’s get the varmint.”
“The varmint has a house full of bodyguards,” Max said in a quiet tone, but his inscrutable face was set as if in stone, his blue eyes like hard jewels, and she knew he wanted to hurt Prince Hugo as much as she did. Locking the door and pocketing the key, he jerked his chin toward her tied-together sheets. “Out the window, since you’ve provided the way.”
Fury overtook her relief. “But?—”
“We’ll get him, Miss Calico.” Max’s voice was calm, but she heard his own fury beneath the calm. Striding fast to the end of the bed, he tested the knots she’d made, pulling them hard. “Just not here, not right now.”
She held his gaze for a long moment, a moment that seemed to make a promise between them. Sending him an abrupt grin, she tucked the pistol she’d taken from him into the belt of her riding skirt and ran to the window and shinnied down the sheets as fast as she could go.
Max waited until she’d made it to the bottom, then started down after her, Cally crossing her fingers the knots Bart had taught her when she was little would hold his weight. Holding her breath until he reached the halfway point, she listened to the sound of chaos that filled the air, coming from the back of the castle.
Running fast to the corner, she peeked around.
All was in a turmoil. Big, gusting plumes of black smoke rose from a large half-constructed building consumed with fire. Nearby, a low, narrow shed burned as well.
A passel of whinnying horses ran across the back courtyard from a large corral, heading around the other side of the house toward the big meadow out front.
Apollo…
She didn’t see him among the fleeing horses.
She wouldn’t leave him behind.
Max’s boots hit the dirt behind her with a thud , raising a tiny cloud of dust. Before she could turn the corner and go get her horse, Max grabbed her hand. “He’s this way,” he said, readin’ her mind, and ran with her toward the trees.
Cally stuck close to Max as they ran, her pistol out to shoot if needed, but there was no one to shoot, everyone seeming to have gone to help with the fire that was burnin’ behind the big castle. The big bell was still clanging as they crossed into the woods. The cries of ‘fire’ had died down, and she figured folks were saving their breath to fight the flames instead, the smell of woodsmoke even stronger now in the air, and rising in huge black puffs into the blue, cloudless sky.
Safe in the trees, she and Max raced up a hillside to the north. Crossing a faint footpath that went west to east, they kept climbing another two hundred feet through the brush and trees until they reached a narrow horse trail. Smack dab in front of them, where the trail crossed through a tiny clearing filled with buffalo grass and little yellow flowers, Apollo waited for her, along with Max’s horse, and Bart and Sheriff Sam, the two men already mounted.
Smudges of smoke darkened their clothes. Restrained rage filled their grim faces, rage and a palpable relief to see her and Max that made her heart glad they were there, that they’d come to rescue her.
She wrapped her arms real quiet like around Apollo’s neck and soothed the distraught horse, his body trembling a bit under his sleek skin, her eyes giving him a fast scrutiny for any injuries. He smelled of woodsmoke, as did Bart and Sheriff Sam, but otherwise, he looked fine, though she wouldn’t know for sure until she saw him move. He wore his own bridle and saddle, and she knew that was either Bart’s doing, or the Evil Prince’s ranch hands hadn’t gotten around to tending to him before her brother and the others had come along.
“He’s fine,” Bart said in a low, reassuring tone, but there was a harshness behind it that she knew was directed toward the Evil Prince. “I checked him over.”
“Miss Calliope,” Max said in a quiet but strained voice, standing beside Apollo’s stirrup, as if ready to boost her into the saddle.
She gave Apollo a soft kiss on his cheek and turned toward the castle.
“Where are you going?” Max said.
“To shoot the varmint.” She wouldn’t kill him, just hurt him enough to make her point, even if it made Ma unhappy, something Cally had tried to avoid these past few months, Ma having had enough to think about trying to get Cally hitched.
“Perhaps you could return some other day for that.” Max grasped her waist and swung her up onto her horse.
“ Prince ,” she said.
“I insist,” he said and held her gaze for a long moment, a long moment that made her heart beat faster. “I swear to you, Miss Calliope, the Evil Prince will pay for this day.”
And he meant it. She could tell by the fire in his handsome eyes. By the set of his firm jaw.
“What are we waitin’ for, then?” she said to the others and turned Apollo toward the Sky Top.
By silent, but mutual, agreement, Max and the others cut cross-country across the Crown in as straight a line as possible to the nearest neighboring ranch, which turned out to be the southwest corner of the Fielding place, the four of them waiting until they were off Crown land before they slowed their horses’ pace.
“Quite a fire,” Max said to Creede and Bart.
“A big building like that half-built stable…” Creede shook his head, the sun high in the sky, the time nearly eleven-thirty. “A real shame it and Hugo’s shed of building supplies burst into flame somehow.”
Max laughed, but the sound was grim. All four of them were still grim, not ready yet to let the memories of what had happened at Hugo’s castle go.
When they reached the creek that flowed through the enviable Fielding grasslands that Hugo had tried to fence off for his own, Miss Calliope insisted they stop so she could check over Apollo for herself. “I heard him whinnying when they took him away from me. Made me mad enough to spit.” She ran her hand over each of the stallion’s legs, her eyes narrowed. “I’d like to see Evil Prince Hugo’s face when he discovers I’m gone.”
Max looked down at her pretty, angry, ready-to-take-her-revenge face. Her shining braid was disheveled beneath the hat Bart had managed to retrieve from the back courtyard. Her pink-striped shirt with the pretty silver embroidery was smudged with dirt. “Did he…?”
“No,” she said, sobering in a way that was new to her, at least in Max’s experience. “Seems a duke from Zalgravia came to the door just as he was about to…” She shuddered, the first sign of outward distress he’d ever seen from her. “I reckon that duke was you, prince. I’d kicked them tall, fancy, polished ridin’ boots the Evil Prince wore, marking them up with dirt. I’d scratched his hand. Made him mad as fire. He grabbed my blouse in his fist right as that butler feller knocked on the door. Seems Evil Prince Hugo felt he had a royal duty to the duke.”
“More likely,” Max said, mentally checking her clothing over as she attended to her horse, Max looking for any signs that Hugo had done anything more than what she’d said, “he was afraid the family was checking up on him.”
Her gaze turned to his from Apollo, her eyes drawn with worry. “Now he will be on the warpath.”
Max gave her a reassuring smile. “The presence of a high-ranking relative in the area should deter him for a while.”
“All he has to do is send a telegram to Zalgravia to discover where the real Duke of Balmont is,” Bart said, watching his sister closely.
“That’s the beauty of this,” Max said. “The real Duke of Balmont is in the United States even now. It’s part of the family history—my assistant’s research recorded his itinerary. The duke is in fact in the mountains of Colorado at this very moment, assuming his schedule is unchanged. Climbing those mountains of Colorado, I should say. Quite out of touch.”
Miss Calliope laughed. “That was smart thinkin’ there, prince.”
“You’re satisfied Apollo is all right?” Bart said to his sister.
“Yep,” she said.
“Then mount up,” Bart said. “I want to be back at the Sky Top before Prince Hugo can marshal his forces.”
Livia and Mrs. James came out on the front porch when Max and the others rode up to the Sky Top ranch house a little before one.
Bart hurried them both back inside, along with Miss Calliope.
Coming belatedly through the front door with Creede, Max found them all in the great room, Mrs. James grasping her daughter in an encompassing hug as Bart spoke in a low tone, tears and anger in Mrs. James’s eyes that were so like Miss Calliope’s, her head bent as she murmured comforting sounds in her daughter’s ear.
The two of them strode away, along the hallway that led to the right to the bedroom wing, Mrs. James keeping Miss Calliope close with her arm around her.
Max and the others adjourned to the cool, elegant parlor.
After sandwiches, sweets, and lemonade had been brought in by Mrs. Zandt, Bart closed the parlor door behind her as she left, Bart saying to the rest of them privacy was what they needed at that moment. But to Max, it felt more as if the tension in the room needed to be shut in, before it exploded out across the Sky Top.
Silence reigned for a good ten minutes as he, Bart, and Creede devoured the food and drink, Bart providing a bottle of whiskey from his office. Livia sat on the flowered sofa, a small, yellow, partially knitted garment lying in her lap, her hands unmoving, folded over the soft-looking pastel yarn. The expression on her face was still shocked, and Max wondered how much worry and fear she and Mrs. James had felt at their long absence.
Standing by the front window, the lace sheers pulled aside, he looked out at the Sky Top Mountains in all their glory, a shot of whiskey in his hand, Max glad for the silence in the room. He’d needed the long ride back to the ranch to get his anger under control.
He needed the silence now to sort out the jumble of emotions that had been bombarding him since he’d seen Miss Calliope carried into Hugo’s castle. Now that the anger was under control, the other emotions were more easily identified. The desire for revenge was one, strong and powerful, filled with a need to make Hugo regret he ever laid a hand on Miss Calliope.
The intensity of the need would have shocked him if it hadn’t been accompanied by a fierce need to protect her. Protect her from Hugo.
Protect her from what Deputy Henderson had said in the future was her fate.
Protect her with his life.
His heart jerked for a moment, but that had been the way he’d felt when he’d stormed Hugo’s castle, and had slipped out the window with her down those life-saving bedsheets.
The door to the parlor opened.
Max turned from the window.
Miss Calliope and her mother came into the room, Miss Calliope dressed in a demure calico dress—Max had to smile at the calico—her hair in a freshly brushed braid. Her eyes were a bit red, but the vitality was back—he would have killed Hugo himself if that vitality had not come back—and alongside the vitality there was a murderous gleam he had every reason to believe was directed at the Evil Prince.
She strode into the room ahead of her mother, Mrs. James seeming to give her a nudge, and Max’s heart went out to her. He’d never seen her so truly shy. “I want to thank you all for rescuing me,” she said, her gaze going to Bart, who had shut the door again behind the two women, then to Creede, then lingering on Max.
Max grinned. “You were a good way toward rescuing yourself,” he said. “Have you told your mother how you were halfway out the window when I arrived upstairs?”
Livia, on the sofa, caught her breath, then laughed, breaking the tension. “Was there a tree outside the window?” she asked Miss Calliope.
“Nope. I’d tied the bedsheets together, then to the bedpost, so’s I could shinny down them.”
Bedsheets. The word hung in the air, the tension drawing in again.
A flush came to Livia’s face, an angry flush. “ Why ?” she said, anger and dismay in her voice. “Why do something so outrageous? Trying to kidnap Jeremiah was bad enough. But to abduct Cally…” She exhaled. “To haul her off, in full view of you all , in broad daylight .” She stabbed one of her knitting needles through a ball of yellow yarn in the small basket at her side. “What does Prince Hugo hope to gain?”
Max leaned back against the window frame, the whiskey taste still sharp in his mouth. Sunlight glinted outside on the glass. “He doesn’t think that way. Truly, he has no conscience. No sense of morals or fair play. He sees the world and everything in it as his for the taking, and he’s not shy about the taking.”
“He’s a snake,” Miss Calliope said.
“And a skunk,” Max said.
Some of her shyness dropping away, Miss Calliope helped herself to one of the sweets on the silver tiered serving dish on the coffee table in front of Livia. “So how do we fight him, prince?” she said.
“Beat the hell out of him,” Bart said, standing beside the closed door.
Over by the empty fireplace, his arm along the mantel, Creede shook his head. “I’m going to go get my posse. I want the law to deal with this.”
“You won’t be able to hold him,” Bart said.
“I can make him uncomfortable enough he’ll want to go back to Zalgravia.” Creede crossed to the white platters on the coffee table and filled his gold-rimmed porcelain plate with another sandwich, his gaze going to Max. “Prince Hugo will be wondering about you, you know. First, you show up unexpectedly, then you and Cally disappear during a suspicious fire.”
Max nodded. “I suppose I could tell him a distraught young woman asked for my assistance and?—”
“You think he’ll believe that?” Bart said.
“No,” Max said and set his whiskey down on the small, round mahogany table beside the window. “It’s time we took the fight to him.”
“That’s what I aim to do,” Creede said.
“Not before I beat the hell out of him,” Bart said. “I would have done it today if I could have been sure we’d get Cally safe away.”
“ No posse ,” Max said. “ No fistfights . There’s too big a chance they’ll escalate to guns and knives. I want him out of Wyoming, for good. And I want him alive when he goes. I don’t dare put him in a position where he’ll be mortally wounded, but I can make his life miserable.”
Bart stepped forward. “What do you have in mind?”
Max smiled, but he knew it wasn’t a pleasant one, filled as it was with latent rage and a growing hatred. “We blindside the enemy. Hit Hugo where it hurts.”
“Brutal,” Livia said.
“War college,” Max said.
Livia filled Creede’s lemonade glass from the pitcher on the coffee table. “Are you this devious with your regular family?” she asked Max, handing the glass to Creede.
“Family?” Max said. “No. But we’re a small kingdom. One must take a firm hand with neighboring countries who are less than allies. One must meet aggression with a powerful hand.”
Bart strode to Livia’s side and took the lemonade glass she held out to him. “You’re saying we start attacking him in a way he doesn’t know it’s us doing the attacking.”
Mrs. James, sitting down beside Livia, shook her head. “No. No attacks. No war.”
“Your family won’t be involved,” Max said. “The fight will be between him and Zalgravia.”
“How are you goin’ to pull that off?” Miss Calliope said, taking another sweet from the tray, looking and sounding more and more like her normal self, and a fresh wave of relief washed through his body, beat fast in his heart.
“Family knowledge,” he said. “Family resources.”
“But your family’s resources are a hundred years from now,” Livia said.
He gave her a grim smile. “I know how to access the ones that exist in this century. With the primitive communication systems of this time, it will be child’s play.”
Mrs. James frowned. “They are not your resources yet, Max.”
“It’s not really theft,” he said. “It’s my family, too, and the sum I plan to take is trifling to the king. Besides, they’ll lose a great deal of it in the Crash of?—”
“Stop,” Bart said.
“Right,” Max said. “In any case, I might as well spend some of it now, for the good of the family. Hugo’s been as big a burden to the current king as to you. Besides, why else have I come here, at this place, at this time, while he’s causing you problems?”
“How will you prove you have a right to the money?” Mrs. James said.
Max held up his right hand, the family seal he’d retrieved from his buttoned shirt pocket when he and the others had returned from the Crown glinting in the sunlight coming through the window. “With this.”