Книга - His Abductor’s Desire

His Abductor's Desire
Harper St. George


Montana Territory, 1887Heiress-turned-outlaw Charity Blake is determined to get back the fortune the Davenport banking family took from her father–even if she has to hold Brent Davenport ransom to do it! After all, the seductive charmer stole something even more valuable from her five years ago: her heart. But once she has Brent in chains, Charity must face the fact that her desire for the man has grown from the sweet dreams of a young girl to the unquenchable passion of a woman. And soon it's not clear whether she's the captor, or the captive….







Montana Territory, 1887

Heiress-turned-outlaw Charity Blake is determined to get back the fortune the Davenport banking family took from her father—even if she has to hold Brent Davenport ransom to do it! After all, the seductive charmer stole something even more valuable from her five years ago: her heart. But once she has Brent in chains, Charity must face the fact that her desire for the man has grown from the sweet dreams of a young girl to the unquenchable passion of a woman. And soon it’s not clear whether she’s the captor, or the captive....


His Abductor’s Desire

Harper St. George






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


Dedication

For my husband, who believed in me when even I didn’t, and for V.S., who introduced me to

historical romance. Love to you both.


Author Note

The Old West has always been a source of fascination for me. It was the last fundamental struggle of men and women in America attempting to tame the natural world while surviving the highs and lows of human nature. Lawlessness pervaded the land, leaving one with the sense that anything could happen—and often did. This tempestuous world spawned the countless legends and tall tales that we still recount today. And the best part is that scarcely more than a lifetime separates us from those days.

This wild time period inspired my heroine, Charity. A woman who defied the odds to take control of her life and attempt to right the wrongs done to her. Her methods may have been dubious but her heart was in the right place. She blended well within a world where often the villains were heroes and the good guys could be corrupt. It’s my favorite kind of story—a story steeped in undertones of gray.

I hope you enjoy my very first romance. Please visit my website at www.harperstgeorge.com (http://www.harperstgeorge.com) and connect with me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/HarperStGeorge (http://www.facebook.com/HarperStGeorge).

Best wishes,

Harper


Contents

Chapter One (#ueb1215b1-f24f-506f-a0dc-014d69e9ed9d)

Chapter Two (#udab78d18-cfa2-5d55-9bdc-b0953d098b92)

Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)


Chapter One

Montana Territory

1887

“Nobody move! Keep your hands where we can see ’em!”

A hush swept over the room as the bank customers, one by one, began to realize what was happening. Charity Blake would have smiled at the effectiveness of her command if she hadn’t been so unsettled to find the place crowded. It was late Tuesday afternoon. No one was supposed to be there except the clerks. Even the bank manager should have been two blocks over at the saloon settling in for a long night of drinking and gambling, his weekly indulgence when his wife spent Tuesday evenings with her sewing circle. Yet, there he sat behind his desk, quivering hands held high in the air, staring wide-eyed back at her.

Apparently their reconnaissance had been wrong.

She vowed to do better next time and pushed the disappointment from her mind. It was better to concentrate on not allowing her own hands to shake around the grip of her pistol than linger on the setback. Besides, she knew from the first two robberies that she had only seconds to command the attention and thus the respect of the room before someone tried to be brave. It was time to get to work.

“Don’t worry, folks. We ain’t here for yer valuables, just the money in the vault.” Her contrived accent came out deep and loud to make it past the muffling barrier of the scarf covering the lower half of her face and to hide her cultured Bostonian intonation.

As she spoke, her partners took their appointed positions. Elle had come in through the back door and quietly made her presence known, while Dew moved to disarm the men in the room, quickly establishing a stack of revolvers in the far corner.

“Get up and open the vault.” Charity barked the order to the manager.

He sputtered for a moment as if he might argue and looked at the customer sitting across the desk from him. Had she not been watching so closely, Charity would have missed the almost imperceptible nod from the man that gave the manager the courage to get on his feet. Hands still in the air, he walked his wiry frame to the vault, which sat in plain view behind the row of clerks, and stopped there, afraid to proceed.

“Th-the key is on my belt.” He explained, hands still in the air. His gaze went from her to the customer left sitting at his desk.

Charity followed his gaze and found herself looking at a broad pair of shoulders encased in a fine wool coat. The coat was impeccably tailored, not the roughspun typically found this far outside of the town of Helena. A banking official was her first thought, but that didn’t explain why her heart was suddenly threatening to pound out of her chest and the blood had gone cold in her veins. The girl who had long ago been banished to areas deep in her subconscious had already recognized the set of those shoulders. She knew that thick, sable hair brushed back in a style that had been entirely too long for Boston society but was a trademark of his contemptuous nature.

“My friend here can help you.” She managed to sound in control as she nodded to Dew who then quickly walked over and cut the key free.

After a moment of hassling with the lock, the bank manager pushed the door and it opened with an ominous screech that filled the deathly silence of the bank. Dew motioned him inside with her gun and followed him in to fill the three saddlebags slung across her shoulders with as much cash and gold as they could carry.

The moment they were out of sight Charity walked up behind the mysterious customer sitting at the desk. It was stupid. Everyone knew you didn’t go begging for trouble. But the devil who she had long suspected had taken up residence inside made her do it. The barrel of her pistol parted the hair at the back of his head.

“What’s yer name, mister?”

The man did not so much as flinch when the steel touched his scalp.

“My name is none of your damned business.” The voice was as hard and cold as the pistol.

“Turn around,” she commanded in a controlled, steady voice, but inside her stomach was in knots.

“The sheriff’s office is only blocks away. If you shoot, you won’t make it out of the bank alive.” He did not turn around nor raise his hands from the desk in surrender.

His refusal to give in to her command only made her devil beg to be appeased. This man and his family had taken everything there was to take from her. She needed to stare him down. Needed him to watch her take something from him, whether he knew her identity or not.

“Turn around, Mr. Davenport.”

That got him.

He jerked around to look at her, steely blue eyes riveted to her face. Too bad he couldn’t see her smile behind the scarf. He wasn’t the type to startle very often and the look he gave her was worth the slim chance of recognition.

Well, almost. Amidst the surprised gasps from some of the bank patrons—it wasn’t every day a member of the Davenport banking family came to a backwater town like Lindon—she heard Elle’s groan of dismay. There would be hell to pay from that quarter later. But Charity knew he wouldn’t recognize her with the scarf covering half her face and her hat pulled low over her forehead. She wondered if he’d even recognize her without the disguise. Did men like Brent Davenport ever remember girls like her after they were done with them?

“You’ve caught me unprepared. I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

Oh, but he had. Their first meeting had been five years ago in Boston when she had been a naive and insipid seventeen-year-old. It had happened at a dinner party she and her father had hosted at their town home. Brent had arrived with his uncle, the head of Davenport Capital, and spent the evening evading the adoring glances of one besotted idiot. Namely, her.

Over the next several months he had toyed with her affections. Nothing too serious—a dance when they happened to attend the same party, a smile from across the room, a casual conversation, and once an out-of-season tulip, her favorite, sent to her during intermission when they had attended the same play. The usher who had brought it to her had responded to her questioning gaze by pointing to the box opposite theirs and Brent had been there watching her. She had felt his gaze on her for the rest of the evening and to this day could barely recall Iolanthe.

That had been the night everything changed. Their flirtation quickly escalated from casual to something far more dangerous. Until he’d disappeared. The anger the memory evoked was enough to make her smile anew at the sight of her gun mere inches from his face.

“I didn’t think your kind made it this far west of Boston.”

He looked at her then so intensely she was certain he saw right through the disguise and knew exactly who she was. “What would you know about my kind?” There was that smirk she remembered all too well.

“Get up!”

Charity knew it was wrong to let him see that he’d gotten to her, but it didn’t matter now. She had just had a moment of epiphany—she’d figured out how to get her fortune back and it wasn’t through robbing banks. To hell if he recognized her. Ransom would accomplish the task quicker and exact a bit of well-earned revenge in the process.

When he didn’t move, she pulled back the hammer in warning. It prompted him to slowly get to his feet just as Dew came out of the vault with the loaded saddlebags.

“Everyone in the vault,” Charity ordered. “Everyone but Mr. Davenport here.”

There was surprisingly little resistance from the customers as they quickly filed into the vault. Elle and Dew had them locked up in under a minute.

“Where is your horse?” Charity asked him when they were finished.

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“It’s out the back way,” Elle offered, having been posted out back for the past two hours. “The gray.”

“You won’t shoot me and get out of here alive.”

“No, probably not, but I don’t really want to shoot you.”

No further explanation was needed because they all heard the unmistakable sound of metal scraping metal and looked to Dew. She held a pair of small, lethal-looking knives and looked like she knew how to use them.

“Fast as any bullet from this range.” Dew smiled.

“There are far more creative ways of dealing with a reluctant hostage.” It was Charity’s turn to smirk. “Bring his horse around.”

Elle complied and it was quickly decided they would stick to their original plan to separate and reconvene at Two Mile. Only Dew would now create a disturbance as she rode through town, in order to create a distraction. Anyone would be suspicious of a man as elegantly dressed as their hostage riding with the two dusty cowpokes that Elle and Charity appeared to be.

Once the horses were secured, Dew mounted and rode off toward the saloon. Charity and Elle waited until they heard her gunshots, a not entirely unheard of occurrence in a town like Lindon, but enough to draw every able-bodied man in that direction, before prodding Brent outside to his horse.

He resisted the moment they reached the horses and made a move to grab the reins of his mount. Charity had anticipated his bid for freedom and pulled her knife from its sheath on her hip and jammed it against his kidney.

“My accomplice isn’t the only one with a knife,” she threatened.

“You’ll hang for this.” His low voice was forced out between gritted teeth.

“On your horse,” Charity ordered.

Soon Charity was holding his reins wrapped tightly in her gloved hand as they rode out of town. The moment the deserted street gave way to plain, they rode hell-bent for Two Mile, the indistinguishable copse of cottonwood trees that marked their ascent into the mountains.

* * *

They rode hard for a while, pausing only for the seconds it took to bind his wrists once they were safely outside of town, and then only slowing after the sun went down when it would have been too risky to keep up such a pace. Brent knew he had to make his move now, while he still had a chance of making it back to town. Otherwise he would risk disappearing forever in the mountains that loomed ahead. With any luck, the night would give him sufficient cover to hide.

He forcibly tried to remove from his mind any thoughts of the furious green eyes that had stared at him down the length of the pistol’s barrel back at the bank. The hat had been pulled low, almost obscuring the face, but those eyes were haunting. Hitting him like a punch to the gut with their ferocity. Recognition had tugged at his consciousness, but rationality told him he was wrong.

It wasn’t her. It couldn’t be her.

But what if it was? His eyes strayed again to the hips of the rider bouncing in the saddle on the horse in front of him. Even in the gray of dusk, he could see the shadowed outlines of their curves. Those shapely hips belonged to a woman. The voice had suggested a woman, too, but it had been too obscured by the scarf for him to tell if it was hers.

Would he even recognize her voice now? Something deep inside told him yes. Just as the eyes had triggered an awareness, so would the voice. He remembered everything about her. And Brent knew he couldn’t leave without finding out for sure if the woman was Charity.

But the girl he knew wouldn’t have done this, reason insisted, and the anger he’d been trying hard to tamp down flared to the surface. His Charity was everything gentle and sweet, not this hellion with a gun. He allowed himself a moment to indulge in the emotion, but then pushed it down again. Anger would only hinder reason.

He waited until the horses slowed to a brisk canter and the taller rider made a move to leave his post in the rear. Brent could tell he planned to maneuver his horse next to the woman’s to talk to her privately. Probably about making camp for the night.

Recognizing an opportunity when he saw it, he instantly devised a plan to get the rider’s gun and force the woman to hand over hers. He waited until the rider was just about parallel to him and lunged. But he overestimated the weight of the rider, realizing too late that it was a tall woman made to look bulky with a padded overcoat, and they both toppled to the ground.

Brent landed awkwardly on one shoulder with the rider directly on his back. The fall had winded him, leaving him gasping for breath and praying no serious damage had been done.

The woman turned abruptly, grasping at the reins of Brent’s horse as it whinnied and violently shook its head to protest against the commotion. Her movements tore the scarf loose and for one moment he had a plain view of her face.

Charity! His dormant heart jolted to life in his chest.

Brent opened his mouth to call out to her only to have a large rag, wet with a nauseatingly sweet smell, shoved against his nose and mouth. He cursed the fact that he had landed on his bound hands and violently struggled to get them out from under him. Just as he felt one begin to release from the bonds, his vision went black.


Chapter Two

Charity was unprepared for the rush of emotions that swamped her as she watched Brent sleep. Trussed up like any good captive should be, he slept awkwardly on his side with his hands tied behind him and secured to his bound feet with a rope. As much as she wanted to hate him, she could only think that his arm must be asleep and how badly it would pain him when he woke up.

The three of them had ridden through most of the night to reach Two Mile and had only met up with Dew a couple of hours ago. Charity had offered to keep watch while everyone rested, in part as penance for taking a captive without getting their agreement but also because she knew sleep would elude her. Who knew that seeing Brent again would overwhelm her so? For crying out loud, she was sitting six feet away from him and the scent that was uniquely his, clean with a hint of sandalwood and spice, was driving her crazy and making her remember their first kiss.

It happened the night at the theater, after he had given her the tulip. She had stood to follow her father out of their box after the show, but he had been waylaid by a group of acquaintances and drawn into a political discussion, leaving her to daydream about the blue-eyed man who had sent the flower. In her memory, she saw herself smiling like a fool as she idly twirled the stem. And then Brent had appeared before her and there, partially shielded in her father’s box by the black coats of the group casually discussing politics, he had smiled and said hello. But his eyes had said so much more and before she could make her clumsy tongue offer a reply, his lips were on hers. It was a brief brush of his mouth on hers, nothing more, but enough to make her knees weak and her blood thicken.

Her father had turned then, as if the first hint of arousal in his only child had summoned his censure, but he only saw Brent, composed and ready to offer a greeting. Charity had stood with her face aflame, unable to think coherently and thankful the conversation had not required her participation.

Which led her to think of their second kiss, the last one, the one that haunted her. Brent and his friends had arrived late to the house party, long after any suitable chaperones had either left or become drunk and loose in their supervision. Had it been a normal party in town, Charity would have gone home herself hours before, but it was in the country, more than an hour from town and she was sleeping over. Brent found her on the terrace, alone and only slightly inebriated with champagne. The passionate look in his eyes had been unmistakable. Her friend Lydia had later told her he had looked like a man possessed when he arrived.

“Can I join you?” he had asked—a cursory question; they both knew the answer.

Charity had nodded, too enamored with him to speak or even turn from where she stood holding the balustrade in a white-knuckled grip. He stopped just behind her and after a pause she felt his arms go around her and pull her close. Without hesitation she melted against his chest and knew the months of flirtation had been building to this. The moist heat of his mouth caressed the column of her neck while his hands roamed her torso before one settled nicely on her breast. That should have alarmed her but it didn’t. Even when it slipped inside her bodice to cup the bare, puckered nipple, she wasn’t alarmed. It felt too right.

And when his long, graceful fingers stroked up her neck to caress her cheek, she instinctively turned her head to find him. His mouth captured hers in an instant, his tongue brushing hers in a deep kiss of possession. It wasn’t until she heard voices around the corner coming closer that she begged him stop.

Brent had moved to stand beside her, breath haggard, clearly unsettled. “Can I come to you tonight, darling?”

Charity could hardly believe what she heard, what he was asking. She hesitated a moment too long and then the moment was gone. He removed himself back to the salon because the other guests were just rounding the corner. What she would have said she didn’t know and was afraid to know. She didn’t see him the rest of the night and the next morning he was gone.

Days later she heard that Brent had gone to visit his mother’s relatives in France before beginning an extended tour of Europe. He had not returned by the time her father’s fortune had been stolen and Charity had assumed him lost to her. She realized now in a moment of startling clarity that ransom, and even the thought of revenge, had been a convenient excuse for taking him. But it wasn’t her true motive.

* * *

As the first rays of dawn began to light the horizon, Charity’s gaze caressed Brent’s handsome face. His features were tranquil in sleep, making him appear younger and less intimidating. The wave of sable hair that normally fell so artfully over his ear had fallen to shield the left side of his face and she wanted nothing more than to reach out and run her fingers through the silk as she pushed it back. She actually curled her fingers into a fist to resist the urge.

“How is he?” Elle’s voice startled her.

“Still asleep. Are you sure he’s going to be all right?”

“I haven’t lost a patient yet.”

“Chloroform, Elle? I don’t understand how you even have that.” Charity turned her gaze to the woman who had been with her since she was thirteen, when her father had hired her as a lady’s companion. With her mother long dead and no female relatives to guide her, he had thought she needed a distinguished lady to do the job and had erroneously assumed Elle was a lady. She had certainly acted the part, but since her father’s downfall and Charity and Elle had started their journey west, Charity had become aware that Elle was brilliantly capable of playing any part put before her.

“Don’t worry, he’s fine. I’ve used it before.”

Charity had no doubt that she had. In fact, Brent woke up before they had even finished breaking camp. The intensity of his stare alerted her and she looked over to find him still lying on his side watching her adjust her saddle. Her earlier bravado deserted her and, suddenly, she didn’t want to face him as Charity Blake. But it was too late to worry about that.

“Breakfast is jerky today,” she proclaimed as she pulled out a few strips of dried venison from a saddlebag and walked over to him. “Not your usual fare, I’m sure.”

She knelt at his side and offered him a drink from her canteen of water. He continued to stare at her; if he recognized her he didn’t show it. Then he finally put his mouth to the canteen and took a long drink, his gaze never leaving hers.

“Oh, surely we can untie him long enough for him to eat and do his business.” Elle smiled, the model of hospitality.

Obviously she didn’t see the raw fury on Brent’s face. Or maybe it didn’t bother her since it appeared to be reserved solely for Charity. Charity, on the other hand, had strong reservations about untying him and wondered if he might risk death by Elle’s gun or Dew’s knives just to get his hands around her throat.





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