Harlequin Historical December 2014 - Box Set 1 of 2: Strangers at the Altar\Outlaw Hunter\Innocent's Champion by Marguerite Kaye

Author:Marguerite Kaye [KAYE, MARGUERITE/ARENS AND MERIEL FULLER, CAROL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2014-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Ramsey Travers jerked his shoulder, dislodging his cousin Dwayne’s pointed chin. He peered harder through Hattie’s parlor window with Dwayne’s breath huffing hot on his ear.

The lace window curtain barely blurred what went on inside his wife’s, and therefore his, house.

“I believe you’re going to need a new wife, cousin,” Dwayne whispered.

Jack Travers yanked Dwayne out of the way and took his place peering over Ramsey’s shoulder.

The humiliation that Hattie was putting him through made him see red. He’d heard about that “seeing red” business before, but had never experienced it until this moment. Hell, he was damn near seeing purple.

“The way I see it,” Jack declared, as if he had the right to, “is that Ram needs to set this wife straight. Ain’t the Travers way to let a wife get away with kissing another man.”

“Well, she don’t rightly know that Ramsey’s alive. Don’t you recall that we told her he was dead?”

“Doesn’t much look like a devoted way to grieve.”

What he wouldn’t give to punch his worthless kin in their yapping mouths... His fists nearly ached with the need. But that would cause a ruckus since the pair of them would fight back. The wind would cover some of the noise, but the marshal, involved as he was in cuckoldry, would still hear the blows and grunts.

To rouse the marshal now wouldn’t be wise. If he didn’t want to end up in jail with the rest of his family, Ram would have to be canny.

“Well, my, my, what do we have here?” A sultry feminine voice came from out of the dark.

Startled, Jack fell against the wall.

Ram wanted nothing more than to shoot his imbecile cousins. He regretted the happenstance that made them kin, which meant that he could not.

“Mind your own business, lady,” he said to the woman, who he suspected was not a lady at all. The rouge on her cheeks, fancy dress cut too low—dead giveaway. He couldn’t figure what a whore was doing in this dull town.

“This un’s kind of pretty if you don’t mind that she’s old,” Dwayne said, looking the woman over and nodding. “Maybe you could cart her off and marry her instead. I’ll say the words all legal-like.”

“I have a wife, you moron.”

“Don’t look to me like she knows it,” Jack said with a glance back through the window.

“Why don’t you gentlemen come quietly off the porch so we can discuss the problem without being overheard.”

“My problem is not your concern.” Ram shot the whore a withering stare, but she was right about getting his stupid cousins off the porch.

“Oh, indeed it is, much more than you might guess.” The woman sighed and gave a lewd yank down on her bodice to reveal more of her shriveling charms. “That woman—your wife—is my stepdaughter.”

“That makes you and her related, Ram,” Dwayne declared. “Reckon you can’t cart her off. You want a bride, Jack?”

“Not that one.” Jack appeared to shiver. “I’m looking for a young and juicy one—no offense intended, ma’am.

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