Rocky Mountain Ride (Rocky Mountain Bride Series Book 7) (26 page)

“This is it. We’ll make a fair show, and see if we can run them off,” Sebastian snarled. “You all right, darling?”

“They are cowards. Shooting into a person’s home.” Francesca’s expression was fierce, but she looked a little ill.

“It’s going to be all right.”

In the dining room, Juan cried out.

Ana came from the pantry, her face wan but determined. In her hands she held a heavy revolver. “Go to Juan. I can hold this door.”

“If it moves, shoot it,” Sebastian said, and grabbed Francesca’s hand. She wasn’t going to cower in the pantry, so he would keep her by his side, and step in front of any bullet meant for her.

Juan crouched behind the dining room table. There was some broken glass and a barricade had fallen, giving them a clear view of the garden.

Sebastian bent over to run to Juan, but his wife rose with a little cry.

“Darling, get down.” He pulled her down.

“Did you see?” Juan asked. “Facedown in the mud?”

“Who?” Sebastian asked.

“Diego.” Francesca tugged at her husband’s hold. “I must go to him! He may still be alive.”

“No darling.” Sebastian dropped his rifle to catch her in his arms. “He’s gone. It’s over.”

“I could help him.” She struggled.

“Wait,” Juan said. “I hear something.”

Sebastian grabbed his gun with one hand, gripping his wife with the other. He wouldn’t put it past her to try to sneak into the garden, even when the Royal Mountain gang roamed about.

Someone was singing loudly, “Farewell and adieu, you fair Spanish ladies…”

Another voice joined in, horribly off key. “Farewell and adieu, ye ladies of Spain…”

Francesca wrinkled her nose. “Who is that?”

Sebastian’s face broke into a smile. “The cavalry.”

Four men came striding out of the mist. Cage, followed by two tall, dark-haired men, and a third, a bearded and shaggy giant.

“Friends of yours?” Juan asked.

“Friends, and friends of friends. Seems my years in America haven’t been wasted after all.”

The song ended.

“Anyone alive in there?” Cage shouted.

“Right as rain,” Sebastian called. “Just stop bloody singing!”

“Is that Lord Chivington?” One of the dark haired men strode forward, grinning.

“It is, Mr. Oberon. Lovely morning for a shootout, isn’t it?” Sebastian bantered as Cage and the rest broke the barricade.

“You wouldn’t know, you lazy git…What were you doing while we ran the gang off? Catching up on beauty sleep? Did the gunfire wake you up?”

“It wouldn’t have, if you’d done the rescue properly. Bloody late, as usual.”

The friends of friends stood with guns at ready as Sebastian stepped over broken glass to greet Cage, and pound the dark haired “Mr. Oberon” on the back.

“We rode all night to reach you,” Oberon said.

“Thank you, my friend.”

“So they’re all gone?” Juan asked their rescuers. “All of the Rocky Mountain gang?”

“Some dead, some shot or rode away,” Cage reported.

“They want easy pickings,” Oberon said.

Francesca nudged her husband. “Who are these men?”

“This is Jesse Wilder. I knew him as Oberon when he was my guide when I first arrived West. We rode together to hunt.”

“My brother, Lyle,” Jesse continued the introductions. The two siblings were alike in height, build, and a shock of black hair. Lyle’s face was clean shaven while Jesse’s sported a few days old beard. Jesse turned to the large sandy haired man. “We left our friend Miles Donovan with the horses, guarding our backs. And this here is—”

“Calum MacDonnell,” the man said in a Scottish accent.

“—though I call him Mac,” Jesse finished.

The Scot nodded, meeting Sebastian’s gaze with serious gray eyes and extending a huge paw to shake the lord’s hand.

Sebastian shook it with a happy grin. “Welcome. Indebted to you.”

“Mac heard of the danger and wanted to ride along. He left his bride of less than a year at home.”

“My pa wouldnae ken why a MacDonnell would help an Englishman,” the Scot said gruffly. “But I heard the tale of the widow, and couldnae stay away.”

“I’m American now,” Sebastian said, pulling Francesca close. “This is my queen and country. I’m only as British as she allows.”

“Hello,” Francesca greeted the lot. “We are very grateful you are here.”

“So the wee widow is married,” Mac said approvingly. “It’s a fine ranch ye have here.”

“Thank you.”

“Bit of a mess now,” Sebastian said. “What with all the bullets in the walls.”

“We can help with the rebuild,” Jesse said. “Though we are all anxious to get back to our wives.”

“And families,” Lyle added. “Just because you can’t make a baby with yours doesn’t mean all of us our shirking at our duties, brother.”

Jesse pretended to punch his brother.

“Come inside and we will feed you,” Francesca offered, a shadow of a smile playing around her face.

The men perked up at that.

“What about Diego?” Juan asked and pointed to Montoya’s body lying in the garden, face down in the mud. “He died with bullets in his back.”

“Diego?” Cage asked.

“He was behind his brother’s death,” Francesca said. “I would’ve saved him if I could. I wonder which bullets killed him.”

Sebastian glanced at Cage, who shrugged and shook his head.

“Perhaps the gang weren’t the allies he thought,” Sebastian commented grimly. “We will never know.”

“We will bury him next to Cyro,” Francesca announced. “He was family, despite what he did. Still, it is fitting, that he died in the mud, for he lived as a worm, letting others do his dirty deeds for him.” She spat, crossed herself, and started striding for the hacienda, calling Ana.

Jesse nudged Sebastian. “I like her.”

“You haven’t even seen her shoot a man.”

Jesse’s eyes widened.

The guests went to fetch their horses and the rest of their party, while Sebastian and Cage took care of the body.

“You’ve got your work cut out for you,” Cage said, viewing the bullet ridden hacienda and the muddy boot prints all over the garden. Across the fields mist was lifting, unveiling the massive mountains beyond.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Sebastian said. “To ride heroically is one thing. To live and love humbly…well, that is the greatest challenge of all. Perhaps I should let the poets know.”

“I’m sure they’d appreciate the truth,” Cage joked along, then clasped Sebastian’s arm. “Proud of you, son.”

Sebastian swallowed the lump in his throat, and went to prepare for his guests, alongside his chosen family and his bride.

*

Epilogue: 15 years later…

“Señor Sebastian come quick!” A young boy, one of Juan’s sons, came running up to the flaxen-haired man working in the field. “There is trouble—your wife—”

Immediately Sebastian’s long legs started striding towards the town. “My wife? Is she in labor? Is the baby coming?” It was too soon. Midsummer, she said. That was two months away.

The baby would have trouble breathing if born too young. He knew from the last delivery he’d attended with his wife, where the mother had been kicked by a horse and the baby came early. The child was too small, and not developed enough to survive. It had been a sad night in that family’s home.

“Where is she?”

“The town square, with all the children. It is not the baby—”

“What?” Sebastian didn’t stop but slowed his stride. “What then?”

“She found the father of Blanca’s child, the one who left, and is shouting at him. She says she will make him pay—”

“Bloody hell.” Sebastian broke into a run, leaving Juan’s boy behind.

The center of the market square was full of onlookers watching the scene. Francesca was there, one arm around her large belly, the other hand gripping a young man’s ear, forcing him to bend double so she could scream into his face.

“Papa!” Chorused a bevy of dark eyed, blond haired boys. Only little Micajah, named for Sebastian’s friend Cage, took after his father with blue eyes.

“It’s all right,” Sebastian assured his sons before reaching for his wife. “Francesca, my love, let him go.”

She did and immediately slapped the youth across the face before shaking her finger at him. “Lying with her and then leaving. You knew her family would cast her out.”

“I’d run if I were you,” Sebastian advised the youth, who scrambled backwards to do just that.

“Your mother would be ashamed of you,” Francesca shouted after the escaping lad.

“My love, calm yourself, think of the baby.”

“Bah, I am fine. The baby is fine.” She accepted his soothing hug, then faced her children. “You boys know better than to seduce a woman and then leave her.”

“Isn’t that what father almost did?” Young Lyle piped up.

Sebastian just grinned. “I thought about it, but it wasn’t the manly thing to do.”

“So you see, you all will be men like your father,” Francesca told her sons. From youngest to oldest, their chests puffed out.

“Come on home, darling.” Sebastian pulled his wife under his arm and escorted her back to the hacienda. He waited until their boys, six in all, were safely inside the garden gate and out of earshot before leaning down to whisper, “I ought to whip you for getting into a brawl when you’re so many months pregnant. That youth was twice your size.”

“With one fifth my brains. He wouldn’t dare fight back, and I knew it.”

Sebastian shook his head, knowing better than to argue further. He kept a tally of all her transgressions and after each child was born and weaning healthy, he took his wife to task. She loved it as much as he did.

“What will the boys think? “

She cast her gaze over their sons. So far, Sebastian had only made male children. “They will learn what it is like to defend a lady. You have taught them this more than I have.”

*

A few weeks later, Sebastian woke before dawn and knew before opening his eyes that his wife was not beside him. Throughout their marriage, he’d kept the rule that she wake him before leaving, so he could at least know where she was. Most of the time, she acquiesced, unless she was craving a session over his knee. With the moon waxing larger in the sky, he knew where her restless energy took her.

He found her in the apothecary, humming as she ground herbs to fine powder. The candles were lit and the scent of burning sage filled the air. The place was spotless.

“You’ll give birth soon,” he said, noting that even the hearth had been swept clean.

“How do you know?”

“Every time, you disappear in the night to tidy this place, and then, when the moon is right, you scrub the floor. The next day, you go into labor.”

She laughed. “You are a birthing woman now.”

“I could be. I’ve caught enough babies.”

Smiling, she let him pull her into his arms. He’d helped her through each of their son’s births, rubbing her back and, when the time came, cutting the cord and watching over her as she nursed the first time.

As dawn lightened the sky, they heard a child shouting.

“Our sons are awake.”

Sebastian cocked his head. “That’ll be Jesse and Calum.” For a minute they listened to the boys calling to one another. Other than James Sebastian the fourth, all the boys were named for Sebastian’s friends. The second to last, Calum, was already wild, preferring the woods to the fields and growing his hair long like his namesake.

Sebastian’s father had been scandalized by the Scottish name. “Calum Chivington? Sound like a bloody Jacobite!” Sebastian hadn’t cared.

“How is baby Miles?” Sebastian cupped his hands around his wife’s belly.

“The next one is Miles,” Francesca said, placing her hands over her husband’s. “This one will be a girl.”

Sebastian didn’t question her. “What’s her name?”

“Rosa.”

“Not Francesca the fifth?”

“She will be Rosalita, her father’s little Spanish rose.” Francesca’s smile was so beautiful, Sebastian couldn’t help taking his wife into his arms to kiss her properly.

A few hours later, Sebastian was digging in the dirt, planting herbs as Francesca directed him. One of the servants came running up, missive in hand.

“Señor, a telegram came for you.”

Francesca took the paper and thanked the servant.

“Read it will you, dearest?” Sebastian brushed dirt from his hands.

Francesca read it and gasped. “Your brother Thomas died.”

“He did?”

“Your older brother John is also not well. They say you must come home.” She gulped. “If John dies, the title will pass to you.”

“Interesting.” Sebastian went to a rain trough to wash his hands.

His wife was biting her lip when he returned. “What will you do?”