The Ballad of Emma O'Toole Read online

  High stakes marriage

  After shooting a man, the stakes for gambler Logan Devereaux have never been higher. On trial for his life, he’s offered a shocking alternate form of restitution…marriage to his victim’s pregnant sweetheart!

  Beautiful Emma O’Toole has sworn vengeance against him—and when a newspaper man puts her tragic story to song, the whole nation waits to see what she’ll do. Their marriage is the riskiest gamble Logan’s ever taken. But he’ll put everything he’s got on the line for a chance at winning Emma’s heart.

  In the cold, dark silence of the room, Emma could hear the slow cadence of Logan’s breathing. She lay still, teeth chattering.

  “It’s warmer over here.” Logan’s voice was like dark honey flowing over warm buttered flapjacks.

  “I don’t trust you.”

  “Now, that stings, Mrs. Devereaux. Have I been anything less than a perfect gentleman?”

  “Will you stop that Mrs. Devereaux talk? I know why you married me, and you know why I married you. Let’s just call this what it is and try not to get on each other’s nerves.”

  “Suits me,” he said with a yawn. “But it’s still warmer on my side of the bed.” He shifted to clear a place for her. “Come here. I won’t bite you.”

  The bed was awfully cold. Still shivering, Emma edged closer, until he reached out and pulled her gently into the curve of his body. “That’s it,” he murmured. “We’re as innocent as two lambs. Now, go to sleep, Emma.”

  But something was different, and she knew at once what it was. A man could say anything with his mouth. But one part of his body would always tell the truth.

  * * *

  The Ballad of Emma O’Toole

  Harlequin® Historical #1151—September 2013

  Author Note

  This is a book of my heart. In the years that passed between its beginning and its publication, the story never left me, and I never gave up on it. Seeing it in print at last, and being able to share it with you, is a very personal joy.

  Park City, Utah, is an hour’s drive from where I live. Cradled by the beautiful Wasatch Mountains, its history is as spectacular as its setting. My own pioneer great-great-grandfather directed the first settlement of the high valley—then known as Parley’s Park. Its progression from farming community to silver-mining boom town, to crumbling backwater, to world-class ski resort and home of the Sundance Film Festival, is a true American saga.

  The Ballad of Emma O’Toole is set amid the silver boom of the 1880s that brought wealth-seekers from all over the world. Young Emma O’Toole is determined to make a better life for herself. But her beauty is offset by every possible strike against her. She’s orphaned, impoverished and pregnant by a nineteen-year-old boy as poor as she is. Fate and tragedy intervene to thrust her into the reluctant arms of gambler Logan Devereaux, a cynical man with a dangerous past. Can such an unlikely pair find happiness together? I hope you’ll be cheering them on, as I was, all the way to the end of their story.

  I offer you this book with a piece of my heart. Enjoy.

  The Ballad of

  Emma O’Toole

  Elizabeth Lane

  Available from Harlequin® Historical and

  ELIZABETH LANE

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  Did you know that these novels are also

  available as ebooks? Visit www.Harlequin.com.

  ELIZABETH LANE

  has lived and traveled in many parts of the world, including Europe, Latin America and the Far East, but her heart remains in the American West, where she was born and raised. Her idea of heaven is hiking a mountain trail on a clear fall day. She also enjoys music, animals and dancing. You can learn more about Elizabeth by visiting her website at www.elizabethlaneauthor.com.

  For Barbara, the little red car, the bad back, the handsome chiropractor, and the birth of this story.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Park City, Utah Territory, April 1886

  “Emma, wake up! Billy John’s been shot!”

  The pounding on the lean-to at the back of the boardinghouse jarred Emma O’Toole awake. She jerked upright in the darkness, her heart slamming.

  “Open the door!” She recognized the voice now. It was Eddie McCoy, one of the miners who bunked upstairs and took his meals in the dining room where she worked. But what was that he was saying about Billy John? Fear for her sweetheart had her scrambling off her thin straw mattress. She lifted the latch with shaking fingers. A blast of wind swept into the tiny space, almost ripping the door from her hand.

  “You got to come now. He’s hit bad, askin’ for you.”

  Emma was already jamming her bare feet into boots and reaching for a shawl to fling over her flannel nightgown. This had to be some kind of awful mistake. How could anything bad happen to Billy John Carter, the only boy who’d ever loved her?

  “Where is he?” she managed to ask.

  “Crystal Queen Saloon. Some slick gambler done it. Bastard claimed Billy John was cheatin’ at cards. Hurry!”

  She followed Eddie, bracing into the wind as she stumbled through ruts where the lumbering ore wagons had passed. From the sprawl of Chinese huts in the gulch below, the rising odors of cabbage, soy vinegar and incense mingled in a sour stench that touched off ripples of nausea in her stomach.

  Just that morning, she’d told Billy John she was with child. Kissing her, he’d promised to marry her the next day and make a home for her and their baby. Pretty words, but she’d seen the flash of desperation in his pale eyes. Supporting a wife and child would take money. And apart from the small pouch of silver he’d scratched out of his mountainside claim, Billy John scarcely had a cent to his name.

  That would explain the card game. But when it came to gambling, Billy John was no better than a lamb asking to be fleeced. What an innocent! When she found him, she was going
to give him such a piece of her mind...

  Emma stumbled to her knees as cold reality struck home. The father of her unborn child could be dying. By now, he could even be dead.

  The miner helped her stand. Looking ahead, she saw that they’d reached the upper end of Main Street. Even at this late hour, the saloons were teeming. With the discovery of silver in the hills above Park City, gamblers and shysters had come flocking like buzzards to a dead mule. Night and day they plied their sleazy trade, robbing honest men of their hard-earned treasure. And now one of them had shot her darling Billy John.

  The Crystal Queen—a dingy gambling den, far less grand than its name—was in the second block. People swarmed around the door, craning their necks to see inside. Someone spotted Emma. A shout went up. “It’s his girl, Emma O’Toole! Let her through!”

  She stumbled forward as the crowd gave way. In the smoky lamplight, she could make out something—no, someone—sprawled on the floor beneath a rumpled blanket. Long, thin legs. Worn, mud-caked boots. It could only be Billy John.

  He lay white and still beneath the blanket, a rolled leather coat supporting his head. She hesitated, suddenly afraid. What if she’d come too late?

  “He’s alive.” The low voice, a stranger’s, spoke from somewhere beyond her vision. “He waited for you. Go to him.”

  Billy John’s eyelids fluttered open. His gray lips moved, shaping her name. She pressed his cold, limp hands to her cheeks.

  “You dear, crazy fool!” she murmured. “What did you think you were doing trying to gamble together a fortune? Don’t you know we could have managed somehow, as long as we had each other?”

  “Too late...” He coughed weakly. “You can have my share of the claim. You and the baby. These folks here will witness to it.”

  “No! It’s not supposed to be this way! We had our whole lives ahead of us, and now—” Choked with sobs, her voice trailed off.

  “Promise me somethin’, Em.” His fingers gripped her hand, their sudden strength hurting her.

  “Anything,” she whispered, half-blinded by tears.

  “The gambler...the bastard who shot me...see that the no-account pays for what he done.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I’ll see to it somehow. Oh, Billy John, don’t die! You can’t—”

  “Promise me!” His eyes were smoldering. “Swear it on your mother’s grave.” He’d started coughing again.

  “I swear it...on my mother’s grave!” Emma battled the urge to throw back her head and scream her anguish into the smoke-filled room.

  “Em...” The coughing had left him even weaker. She could feel him going slack against her. “Em, I’m so cold...”

  “No!” She flung her arms around him, binding him to her. But she couldn’t hold his spirit. Even as she pressed him close, she felt it quiver and rise, leaving his young body lifeless in her embrace. Her head dropped to his chest, ears straining for the sound of his heart. But he was gone.

  Slowly Emma became aware that the room was full of people. She felt their curious eyes on her, watching her like spectators at a show, and she knew that she had few friends in this place. There was no one she could lean on for support. Somehow she would have to get to her feet and walk out the door all on her own. But first she had a promise to keep.

  Slowly she sat up. Her eyes found the marshal, a big, ruddy man she’d often seen in town.

  “Are you all right, girl?” the marshal asked her.

  Emma shook her head. Lifting the edge of the blanket, she tugged it over Billy John’s face to protect him from staring eyes. Then she turned on the crowd in sudden ferocity.

  “Who did this?” she demanded. “Where’s the man who shot him?”

  “Here.” The voice was the one she’d heard earlier, telling her that Billy John was still alive. It came from directly behind her, its tone soft but harsh, like velvet-cloaked flint.

  Slowly she turned, forcing her gaze to travel upward, over the expensive calfskin boots and along the length of lean, muscular legs encased in fawn-colored merino trousers. Her eyes skimmed the masculine bulge at their apex, then darted to the polished belt and fine woolen vest. The clothes alone were probably worth enough to feed a poor family for a season. But the details of the gambler’s costume evaporated as Emma looked up to meet a pair of eyes as black as the infernal pit. His face was dark, rugged and, except for a faint, slanting scar across his left cheek, so handsome that he might have acquired that mark in exchange for his soul.

  He stood coatless, his cravat askew and his white shirt speckled with blood. His eyes were laced with red, his black hair mussed and tumbled. He looked, Emma thought, as if he were standing on the brink of hell, about to be shoved into the flames.

  “I shot your young man.” His voice was drained of emotion. “My name is Logan Devereaux. The last thing I wanted was to kill the boy. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry?” She flung the words at him. “Billy John was only nineteen years old! He never harmed a soul in his life! We were going to be married tomorrow. That’s the only reason he was here at all, to get money for us. Now he’s dead—and you’re sorry! You can go to hell and burn there, Mr. Devereaux!”

  She stumbled to her feet, ready to fling herself on the stranger and do as much damage as possible before the crowd could drag her off, but the emptiness in his eyes stopped her like a wall. It was as if he was indifferent to any punishment she might inflict on him—as if she could set out to kill him, and he wouldn’t care.

  She would have to find another way to hurt him.

  She drew back into herself, gathering her strength. Then, abruptly, she wheeled toward the marshal. “Take this man away! Lock him up in your stoutest cell and, no matter what he tells you, don’t let him out!”

  The marshal raised a shaggy eyebrow; then, with a shrug that implied he’d had the same idea all along, he unfastened the handcuffs from his belt and clicked them around the indifferent wrists of Logan Devereaux.

  Only when he’d finished did Emma turn back to face the man who’d murdered Billy John. His bloodshot eyes met hers, mirroring Emma’s own helpless rage. His mouth twitched as he swallowed, then spoke in a hoarse whisper.

  “You must believe me, Emma O’Toole. I never meant to—”

  “No,” she snapped, determined that his words would not move her. “I don’t have to believe a single word you say. It was a foul and brutal thing you did, Mr. Devereaux. Whatever it takes, so help me, I won’t rest until I get my revenge!”

  Chapter One

  A frigid rain had moved in behind the wind, its patter a dirge in the darkness. Water drizzled off the eaves of the Crystal Queen where Emma huddled in the doorway, watching the undertaker’s cart haul Billy John away.

  The saloon had shut down on the marshal’s orders, but the owner had grudgingly let Emma remain with the body. She’d kept her vigil until the very last.

  By now it was well after midnight. Main Street was all but deserted. Raindrops froze in the wagon ruts, forming an icy glaze. Emma shivered, her arms wrapping her body as if to protect the child she carried. Despite the cold, she was reluctant to leave the saloon behind. The Crystal Queen was the last place she had seen Billy John alive. She couldn’t stay here, she reminded herself. She needed to get back to the boardinghouse.

  Jerking her woolen shawl tight around her, she plunged into the downpour. Vi Clawson, her employer, prided herself in running a respectable place. When Vi learned about the baby, Emma was certain to lose her job. Then where would she go? She couldn’t think clearly enough to make a plan. Not when all of her thoughts kept returning to the tragedy that was just a few hours old.

  A moan quivered in her throat as she relived the horror of Billy John’s death. She remembered his colorless lips, the strin
gs of hair plastered against his white forehead. She remembered the light fading from his sweet blue eyes, the tension easing from his hands...

  She willed the image away. She’d promised Billy John that Logan Devereaux would pay for his crime. Only when that was done would she feel any peace.

  Like fire through a lens, she focused her fury on the handsome gambler. She imagined him drawing his pistol, taking time to aim at a vital spot. She pictured the coldness in those black eyes as he pulled the trigger, the glitter of triumph as Billy John crumpled to the floor.

  The emotion that seethed inside her was as close to pure hatred as anything Emma had ever known.

  Logan Devereaux was in jail tonight, where he belonged. His trial would be held within the next few days. She would be there when the judge found him guilty and sentenced him to death. She would be there to watch him hang.

  And then, what in heaven’s name would she do?

  The rain was falling harder than ever. As Emma stumbled along the slippery boardwalk, wet hair streaming in her face, a shadowy figure stepped from the lee of a doorway. She heard the sound of footsteps behind her. Then, like magic, an umbrella materialized above her head to shield her from the downpour.

  “Allow me to see you home, Miss O’Toole.” The speaker had fallen into step beside her. Through the rain-streaked darkness, a short, stocky man with reddish hair and thick, square glasses took shape in Emma’s vision. “Hector Armitage of the Park Record. I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

  Emma shuddered, clutching the rain-soaked shawl to her body. “What do you think? Would you be all right?”

  “Of course not. I think you’ve been through a very rough time, you poor girl. Here.” Balancing the umbrella, he shrugged out of his thick tweed jacket and draped it around her shivering shoulders. Emma huddled into the dry warmth, not caring, for the moment, that the fellow clearly wanted something in exchange for his kindness. She was cold and alone, and she needed someone— anyone—to be with her.