Chapter 25
CHAPTER 25
Feeling safe atop Apollo, who seemed to have recovered from his ordeal at the Evil Prince’s castle, Cally steered around a fallen log that had blocked a bit of the trail that led deep into the aspen grove bordering Fox Meadow, the meadow an hour or so up the slope of the nearest of the Sky Tops to the ranch house. A herd of deer grazed on the long grass. A flock of yellow meadowlarks flitted among the pine, their birdsong and chatter filling the hot air.
A slight breeze trembled through the green aspen leaves, and Cally reckoned she might have been tremblin’ just that way herself when she’d been locked in that second-floor bedroom with Prince Hugo.
A shudder went through her at the memory. A heated rush of rage followed, Cally mad as a hornet at the Evil Prince, for what he’d tried to do to her, for what he’d done to Apollo. She turned in her saddle toward her ma, who was riding behind her atop her dappled horse Helios.
Ma’s face was calm, but Cally knew that glint in her eyes held the same rage as did Cally’s own.
“He shore was named correctly, Ma,” Cally said in a quiet tone, the aspen hushed around them. “He’s mighty evil.” So evil that Cally had been afraid. She were hardly ever afraid. Once, two years ago, when rustlers had come after her family, she’d had some moments of fear. And seven years ago, when her pa had died, she’d been terrible upset, grieving for him and fearful her ma might die, too.
But today…
When the Evil Prince had grabbed her in that upstairs castle bedroom, she’d understood what he intended to do. She understood now what Max had saved her from.
She’d been furious at Prince Hugo.
She’d been terrified. Overpowered, without her horse and rifle to protect her.
Now that she was safe again, she wanted revenge. She wanted to publicly denounce him for the varmint that he was.
“Cally?” her ma said, bringing her horse up beside Apollo.
“Yes, Ma?”
They were coming up along the pebbly edge of the lake where her suitors had gone trout fishing the day before—Sky Lake. Sunlight sparkled on the clear blue water. The pine and aspen growing thick around the lake seemed to shimmer, the sun was so bright.
Ma sat straight in the saddle, Cally remembering how she’d taught her to ride when she could first walk, in a tiny saddle on the gentlest pony in the world, Cally remembering the two of them racing across the Long Meadow when Cally had grown older. Folks around these parts seemed to have forgotten all that, once Pa had died. Life had gone all solemn and grave then.
It wasn’t until Livie had come along that Cally and her family had come fully back to life, Bart most of all. “Besides shooting Prince Hugo and stringing him up by the ankles in the town square,” Ma said, “how do you wish to address what happened today? Will you come to town tomorrow and socialize with your suitors and their families? Or do you need to stay here for a bit, away from others?”
Cally gave her a grin, though in her heart, she felt a bit shaky. “You don’t need to hide me away, Ma. I’ll behave. When I get my revenge on the Evil Prince, it won’t be somethin’ other folks know about.”
“I’m not thinking about other people, Cally. I’m thinking about you.”
“You’re worried I might go a bit loco because of bein’ kidnapped and all.”
Ma laughed and reached over and tweaked Cally’s long braid. “No such thing, daughter, and you know it. Most folks need time to recover when they’ve been put upon by others. I’m asking you if you want to do that here at the Sky Top.”
Apollo was doing real well after bein’ put upon by the Evil Prince’s men, a memory which made Cally angrier than ever. “I won’t go hiding, Ma. It’s like what you and Livie said at the house. Folks need to see me having a normal time in town, or they’ll go thinkin’ something happened that didn’t.”
Ma’s eyes searched Cally’s face, and a rush of love and gratitude for having such a ma struck Cally’s heart. “I won’t ask you to do something you’re not ready for, sweetheart.”
“You’re not, Ma. I’m ready for anything.” And the first thing she was ready for was another kiss from Max, to wash away all her memories of his evil ancestor.
Back at the house, Cally went looking for Max. She’d been feeling real shy of him earlier, and she didn’t want him to think she wouldn’t have anything to do with him, now that his evil ancestor had done what he’d done that day.
She knew it pained her prince to have Hugo for a relative. It would pain her, too, to have such a varmint in the family. She knew it pained him that Hugo had tried to harm her.
She would remember for the rest of her life the look on Max’s face when he’d burst into that second-floor bedroom while she was halfway out the window, the determination in his handsome jaw, the urgency in his handsome eyes.
The deadliness in that masculine mouth.
A shiver went through her at the memory. A memory of a relief so immense she still didn’t have words for it. A memory of a thrill that had rushed through her entire being, that he was at her side.
It was a real clarifying moment. She’d been having so much fun with him before that morning, that she’d plumb near missed how her feelings had been movin’ along ahead of her head. Her head had caught up today at the castle. She’d realized those feelings were more than having fun, more than having a buddy.
More than having a kiss with a man who had charmed her every bit as much as she charmed any horse in her vicinity.
She found him outside the guest cabin, between the cabin and the riverbank, talking with Bart in a serious manner, and she reckoned it was over his varmint relative.
His face lit up when he saw her coming through the long grass.
She gave him a big smile, afore he could start having worries about that morning. “Howdy, prince,” she said. “Ma wants to know if you’re comin’ to town with us tomorrow.”
He stood there, tall in the sunlight, the grave expression on his face only making him handsomer, his cowboy clothes fitting his personality in a way that she reckoned would surprise the folks back in Zalgravia, where his princely clothes likely fit him just as well. “That’s my intention,” he said.
“We were just discussing that,” Bart said, equally serious, and she knew he’d rather they all stayed safe at the Sky Top. The only thing that made him willing to go was Ma’s concern about Cally’s reputation, and he knew as well as Ma did that that reputation had to come first.
“I’ll need clothes,” Max said.
Cally felt a grin come to her face, the grin driving away more of the memories of that morning. “You’re worse that some of the ladies in town,” she told him, “always needin’ new clothes.”
He grinned back, and the hint of worry that had been in his handsome eyes dropped away. “A duke always, always , requires the finest of clothing.”
“I thought you were a prince.”
“I am,” he said. “But for the next few days in town, I’ll be my ancestor, the Duke of Balmont.”
It had been the best plan Max and Bart could come up with. Now that Evil Prince Hugo had seen Max for himself, and Max had been introduced to him as the duke, it was the only way Max could go to town and socialize with the others.
In the past—or rather, in the future, in Max’s time—the idea of portraying any of his ancestors would have struck him as the greatest of larks. Right now, however, the idea only filled him with grim determination. Though he didn’t doubt he could pull it off.
Unless the real duke unexpectedly arrived in Mule Stop.
Standing at Max’s side between the guest cabin and river, looking like a breath of fresh air, Miss Calliope frowned. “What about my suitors?” she said, the shy, subdued manner she’d had earlier seemingly erased by the long horse ride with her mother, and he wondered how much of it was due to her natural resilience and how much to her keeping any residual trauma to herself. “They’ll wonder how a butler became a duke.”
“I doubt any of your suitors except Finn ever even looked me in the face.”
She gazed at him with those clear blue eyes. “I reckon you’re right, prince.”
“You’ll need to start thinking of me as a duke for the next few days. Especially if Hugo shows his face in Mule Stop.”
Bart gave her a pointed look. “No revenge while we’re in town, Cally,” he said.
“I won’t do anything that’ll raise talk, Brother. I promised Ma I’d behave, especially while the suitors and their families are around.” Her eyebrows drew together, her pretty eyes narrowing, a bit of anger, not mischief, in her gaze. “But I still want to shoot the varmint.”
That ever-present fear Max had, that his presence in the past could lead to Hugo’s death—and the wiping out of Max and his family—hit again, hard. “Please remember,” he said, “that the varmint is my great-great-great-grandfather, and that my great-great-grandfather—who is Hugo’s firstborn son—has not yet been conceived.”
“Don’t worry none, prince,” she said, but that glint of anger was still in her narrowed eyes. “I’m aiming to be the finest lady around. Folks from Mule Stop will hardly recognize me.”
That night after supper, when the evening shadows were growing long, and the heat of the day was slipping away with the sun, Cally, alone on the front porch, rocked in one of the rocking chairs, her silver charm bracelet in her hand. She’d hoped for a game of checkers with her prince, and was still hankering for another kiss, but he was in the house with Bart, making plans for the next few days in town, and she sighed. Now that she’d found a feller she wanted to kiss, Ma and Bart were doing a mighty good job of keeping him away from her.
But they couldn’t stop her thinking about him.
He surely was a different kind of man than her suitors. His giving out orders, when giving out orders was needed, never seemed to bowl her over, not like when other men tried to tell her what to do. He listened to her, too, paid attention to what she said, unlike the fellers she’d met in Denver and Cheyenne, who saw her as someone to flatter and treat with kid gloves. Fellers who knew not a thing about her, but who were ready to hitch themselves to her for the rest of their lives—all for her fortune in land and cattle.
All for a share of the Sky Top Ranch.
That very same Sky Top was quiet now. The scouts Bart had put around the perimeter of the ranch had raised no alarms about Prince Hugo coming this way. The birds in the trees were chirping their last chirps of the day over the low, monotonous, rushing sound of the nearby river.
And all she could think about was how it had felt when Max had grasped her to him when he’d burst into the bedroom that morning at the castle, how he’d hugged her hard when she’d run to him, remembered how it had felt when he’d held her close, the heat of his grip, the flutter of something deep inside her at his touch, something wanting and heated.
The front door opened quietly to her right.
Cally’s heart began to beat faster.
Livie stepped outside.
Disappointment struck Cally, that Livie wasn’t her prince.
Livie smiled. “They’re still working out their plans for the next few days,” she said, as if she had read Cally’s mind. Or maybe she had read Cally’s face, which told Cally just how much Max was affecting her, for she was known for her poker face when she wanted to hide her feelings.
She closed her hand around her bracelet, hiding it as Livie lowered herself onto the rocking chair next to Cally’s. “How are you doing?” Livie asked in a gentle tone that made Cally even more grateful she was her sister now.
“I’m fine,” Cally said, truthfully. “Apollo and I had a long talk, then Ma and I went riding.”
But Livie’s gaze was on Cally’s closed hand. “What’s that?” she said.
“Nothing.” Cally shoved the bracelet into her skirt pocket too fast for Livie to recognize it, but one of the little horse charms caught the edge of the pocket, glinting in the last rays of the sun, and the rest of the darned charms jingled.
Livie froze. “Cally, is that…?”
Slowly, Cally pulled the bracelet back out of her pocket.
Livie gasped and jumped to her feet as fast as a lady in her condition could jump. “ Where did you get that? ” she said, edging away, her gaze going to the fading blue sky
Cally laid the charms out along her thigh, atop her calico dress. “You remember when Miss Emmentine’s brother got struck by lightning and disappeared, taking this bracelet with him?”
Livie nodded. “Who could forget?”
“Remember a few days later, when a thunderstorm came real low over the bluff, all churning and thundering, like it did the day Miss Emmentine’s brother left?”
Livia shivered in reply.
“Well, right about then, this here bracelet popped out of nowhere, over by the outcropping along the bluff’s edge, where the trail to the little spring in back of the house joins the path along the cliff. I was standing in the trees not more than twenty feet away.” She wasn’t sure if she should tell Livie the rest, how folks had appeared out of nowhere, too, not solid like the bracelet, and not so much as if they were ghosts, but not as if they were actually there, neither. Livie might not want to go back along the bluff if she knew that, and Cally didn’t want her to fear the ranch. “One minute the bracelet wasn’t there, then the next, the thunderclouds disappeared, and there it sat, all shimmering in the sun, except for that blackened part.”
“Oh, my gosh.” Livia edged past the big table to the end of the porch and glanced at the sky again. “Do me a favor, Cally. Keep that away from me.”
“I don’t keep it in the house,” Cally said. “You’re safe. I’ve been careful.”
“But why on earth are you keeping it rather than giving it to Doc?”
“You ever think you might like to go back to the future, Livie?”
Livie looked at her for a long moment. “Not if it meant leaving all of you.”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Cally said. “Once you leave, you might never be able to come back. It ain’t like takin’ the train from Cheyenne to Denver. Or the stagecoach from Mule Stop to Laramie. You might never get a chance to go home. You’d have to be real sure you were heading someplace you wanted to be. With someone you wanted to be with.”
“Oh, Cally. Are you saying what I think you’re saying? The prince? You’re thinking of going to the future with Prince Max?”
“It’s just a thought, Livie. I ain’t done nothin’ to make it happen. And I might not get a chance if I wanted one. Doc says it’s not the object alone that sends folks through time. Like Max’s trophy. His trophy in someone else’s hands might not send them anywhere, even if they’re struck by lightning.”
“But you want the option,” Livie said.
Cally nodded.
Livie sighed. “I can’t say I blame you. It’s a whole different world. And you’ve always struck me as someone who would love to explore the world outside Mule Stop.”
“You won’t tell Ma?”
“No,” Livie said. “But I doubt there’s much your mother misses.”