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Important notice: All excerpts have been submitted by the author.

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Author: Carole Howey

Chapter One

Billy Deal was almost too good-looking to be a man. With his baby blue eyes, fair, dimpled chin and a crop of curly blond hair, he had the look of a cherub, of a Boticellian image perfectly preserved and perpetually youthful. He smiled easily, and his smile left a string of broken hearts in its wake. Women, his friends were fond of repeating, didn't know whether to mother him or take him to bed. And, as he himself was fond of replying, he was fortunate that the result was usually the latter. Just now, in fact, the two fairest tarts in the Fort Worth Saloon, who were only average as most of the outlaw's conquests went, dangled from his arms like Christmas tinsel.

Kieran Macalester smiled at the sight. In spite of the fact that his friend's good looks drew women like flies to manure -- maybe even because of it -- Macalester did not envy the younger man. Billy Deal possessed, in equal measure to his outward appearance, a quick mind, a quicker temper and an even quicker hand to the trigger, all of which his friends and adversaries alike tended to overlook, to their eventual misfortune. Still, each of these attributes, Macalester reflected, sipping his whiskey, had worked to his own advantage more than once: having a partner who drew a lot of attention tended to leave one free to operate with the benefit of obscurity.

Macalester finished his whiskey and stood up slowly to his full six feet, shaking his head at a girl who approached him; a young whore who couldn't have been more than fourteen. His tastes ran to older women, women who had better sense than to trifle with the likes of Billy Deal.

Deal was singing a bawdy song with the piano player in his staunch, tone-deaf fashion. Macalester approached him and struck him lightly on the shoulder.

"Business, William." He cut through the improbable harmonies.

Deal levelled surprised azure eyes at him, and Macalester could see that he'd had more redeye than was good for him.

"Humble business. Remember?" Macalester went on patiently. "Dinner. You can serenade these ladies when it's finished. Unless they find their ears, meanwhile."

Billy scowled. Even his scowls were pretty.

"Your damned watch is fast again," he grumbled, but gingerly disengaged himself from the attentions of the giggling, somewhat slovenly girls, who looked to Macalester as though they were but mischievous children who had gotten into their mothers' powders and rouges on the sly.

"I'll be along later," Billy promised them, bussing each of them full on the mouth while his hands slid to their ample backsides.

"You ain't goin' anywheres, Mister." A new voice growled from a shadowy corner of the saloon. Billy's sharp eyes instantly focused on the corner from which the bearlike sound had emanated.

"It's right kind of you to invite me to stay," he replied, and Macalester recognized his polite tone as a precursor of trouble. "But I did say I'd be back."

From the shadows emerged a rangy man about Billy's age, which was several years younger than Macalester's own, clean shaven and wearing jeans and a denim shirt similar to Billy's. Macalester noticed that the man's gun was tied down. He was sure Billy noticed, too. A man with Billy's reputation didn't live to Billy's age without keen powers of observation, among his other talents.

Macalester felt a small tightening in the pit of his stomach with which he was all too familiar. He'd lost count of the number of times Billy had faced men like this one. They were old, young and everywhere in between. So far, miraculously, Billy hadn't killed anyone. He had merely injured his opponents enough to make them think long and hard before challenging anyone again. But it was only a matter of time, Macalester reflected. Only a matter of time until Billy Deal actually killed someone. Or until someone killed him. And then he, Macalester, would have to find himself a new partner. A tedious and uninviting prospect.

"And I said you ain't goin' nowhere," the other man insisted.

The challenger's grammar, Macalester noted with wry amusement, was deteriorating with the passage of time. He further noted the man's wet shirt front rising and falling with each shallow, rapid breath he drew. His lips, which he licked frequently, were parted, and revealed bad teeth. Macalester pursed his mouth and backed away from Billy, who was displaying no such anxiety.

"Finish this up and let's get going, Deal," Macalester said in a purposely loud and clear tone.

The two girls, at least one of whom had no doubt been the cause of the debacle in progress, retreated behind the piano, their young, painted features slack. Macalester leaned his broad back against the faded wallpaper not far from the door, and far enough, he hoped, from the action. Sometimes these would-be heros shot wide. Once one had even put a bullet through the crown of his own hat, ruining a perfectly good twelve dollar Stetson, not to mention adding a grey hair or two to his lank mahogany locks. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and felt his jaw clench as he watched the adversaries, standing but ten feet apart. A forty-five could do considerable damage at that distance, even if the aim wasn't too good. The challenger was angry, and scared. Billy, to all appearances, seemed more bored than annoyed.

"You... Billy Deal?" The man tried his voice.

"What if I am?" was Billy's casual, drawling response.

The man licked his lips again. He did not move, except to glance at Macalester.

"Then that makes you... Kieran Macalester?" The bravado waned from the challenger's voice.

Macalester shrugged, not taking his eyes from the man who was now dangerously close to drawing his weapon.

"Man like you ought to know better than to ask a question like that," Macalester replied quietly. "Or maybe when to ask it."

Macalester noticed several things at once from the corner of his eye: the bartender slowly ducked down behind the bar. Two men who had been drinking at the bar sidled behind the piano near the terrified girls. And an old man who had been sitting in the back had, with remarkable stealth and agility, slipped out the back way, no doubt to summon the sheriff.

Billy cleared his throat, drawing Macalester's attention again. The younger man was motionless as an ivory statue, his sky-blue eyes unblinking.

"Well, Mister? I ain't got all day," he remarked lazily.

Macalester wanted to close his eyes, but he dared not. He was aware of movement and noises in the street outside. If the sheriff got in there, he reflected grimly, they would never make it to Humble's.

In the instant it took him to blink, a shot was fired. The stranger's gun clattered to the floor and he was gripping his bloodied hand with a raw cry of pain. A curl of grey smoke issued from the muzzle of Billy's .45.

Macalester did not concern himself overmuch with the condition of Billy's latest victim. The foolish man would live. Not well, and not happily, without the use of his right hand, but that was his problem. After all, he had challenged Billy, and what was Billy supposed to do? Let the fellow shoot him? Macalester sprang forward and seized Billy's arm, pulling him quickly toward the door.

Outside, in the September twilight, Macalester deftly unlashed the horses, Billy's and his own, as Billy mounted.

"Wait." Billy hesitated, looking about. "I gotta -- "

"That's them, Sheriff!" I was an old man's voice across the street. "I saw 'em! They -- "

"Too late," Macalester told Billy, his pulse accelerating. "Save it 'till we're out of town."

Before he was completely in the saddle, he reined his appaloosa away at a gallop without looking back. Billy would follow. The sheriff probably would not, satisfied that the outlaws had left town without further threat to the well-being of his community, or to his own life. There were, Macalester reflected, certain advantages to an unsavory reputation.

Chapter Three

"He is stupid!" Soprano Geneva Lionwood wrenched the startled, inept tenor's music from his trembling hand and hurled it to the stage before her.

An obligato of colorful Italian insults ensued.

"You are stupid," she spat back at the red-faced man across from her, this time in flawless Italian. "This is the fifth time you've walked on my cadenza in this rehearsal alone. If you do it one more time, I'll have you skewered and roasted for the pig you are!"

Another vituperative recitative of scathing Mediterranean insults, this time from the orchestra pit. Italo Campanini, the world-renowned tenor who brought crowds to their feet at La Scala, Covent Garden, the Academy of Music and dozens of other opera houses throughout the world, had walked on her cadenza. Again. And now the conductor, Campanini's countryman Vianesi, was berating her for it. This was insupportable. Abbey must know. And Blaine must back her up.

"But he is wrong!" Still in Italian, Geneva pleaded with the conductor, although she could not see him for the footlights. "Tell him! There are a full three measures of three there, with a fermata and ritardando. Even if the direction wasn't specific, it makes no sense musically or dramatically for him to take a single step before I finish my cadenza!"

"Disgraziata! How does she expect me to change my costume for the next scene if I am standing here with my thumb up my fundant waiting for her to finish?" Campanini, obese, perspiring, appealed to the invisible conductor. "I remind Signorina Lionwood that it is Campanini's name above hers on the handbills!"

"And it is Gounod's name above yours!" she retorted, giving the luckless score on the stage a little kick. "And Mr. Abbey's! I very much doubt that a man of Mr. Abbey's reputation wants his premier production literally trampled to death by a selfish oaf of a -- "

"Miss Lionwood!"

Henry Abbey, new director of the even newer Metropolitan Opera House, halted the commotion from the wings with his stentorian exclamation. He was a paragon of grace and diplomacy as he strode smoothly out onto the stage, and Geneva was relieved. She didn't like him personally, but that was not important. Abbey was a man of musical integrity if no other kind, and was, moreover, an American, like her. His will must supercede Campanini's. Even Vianesi's. This round was surely hers. She smiled at his approach.

"Mr. Abbey -- "

He held up a hand.

"Not another word, if you please, Miss Lionwood." He turned to Campanini, and Geneva could scarcely contain her delight at the dressing-down that the tenor was about to receive. If she was lucky, Abbey would give the conductor a courteous but firm rebuke, as well.

"Please accept my apologies on behalf of Miss Lionwood, Signore." Abbey spoke in Italian and bowed low to the tenor. "She is young, and she does not yet know the way of things."

Geneva felt as if she'd been punched in the stomach. Over Abbey's bent back, Campanini sent her a triumphant sneer. Before she could recover, Abbey straightened and turned to her, wearing the look of a stern, scolding papa.

"Let us have no more of these outbursts," he cautioned, still speaking Italian, shaking a finger at her. "Signores Campanini and Vianesi are busy and important men who have been performing opera since you were a child. Neither of them need the instruction of a young snip with a wealthy patron."

Geneva bit her tongue and waited. It was all true: she was hardly the headline performer; all those present were far older and more experienced than she, and she did enjoy the patronage of Blaine, Lord Atherton, which was largely responsible -- all right, then, wholly responsible -- for her having been granted the role of Marguerite in the Metropolitan Opera House's premier performance of Gounod's Faust, although her ability to perform the role in her own right was unquestioned. But surely Abbey could not mean to allow these proud, pompous asses to make a gross mockery of Gounod's genius!

Without another look at Geneva, Abbey started off.

Mind yourself, now, girl, Audrey, her friend and wardrobe mistress, would warn her, Geneva knew, if she were there. But Audrey was dressing Calve across town at the Academy of Music.

Pride, and a sense of fairness, got the better of Geneva's instincts for self-preservation

"But Mr. Abbey -- "

"Look here, Miss." Abbey spun on her and spoke in cold, crisp English. "We both know that the only reason you stand here at all is because you have the favor of a prominent patron of the art. I cannot dispute your right insofar as the music is concerned, but I, and the opera house, stand to lose far more by angering Campanini and the others than by catering to your whims, right or wrong. I have kept silent as to the means by which you have secured the favor of Lord Atherton," he said with a knowing leer, "and thus the leading role for this production. I expect you to keep silent in the matter of how I manage it. You are expendable. I wanted Nilsson for the role. If you cause me any more trouble, I'll see to it that I get her, and Lord Atherton's bequest be damned."

Abbey nodded toward the score, still on the stage.

"Pick it up," he ordered her. "Give it to Signore Campanini. And apologize to him. While you're about it, apologize to Signore Vianesi, as well."

Geneva stared. She suspected that Abbey's angry commands had more to do with her recent rebuff of his unwanted advances than with his desire to appease either the tenor or the conductor. He wanted to shame her in front of all of them, and to show her just how much power he had.

She hated him.

In the folds of her gown, she squeezed her hands into fists. Use your head, girl. Audrey's constant, wise admonition was like the ring of a hammer on an anvil. The problem was, the anvil, in this case, was her head. And it was hard.

"Do it, Miss Lionwood." Abbey was impatient.

"Very well." She thought she'd choke on the words.

Pick it up, a naughty voice in her head encouraged. Pick it up and give it back to the pig. And tell him how sorry you are.

She stooped to retrieve the mistreated score. Abbey gave her his fingers to help her stand again, but when she glanced up, she saw that both he and Campanini were taking advantage of her position to look down her admittedly scandalous, for an afternoon dress, neckline.

But even if they hadn't taken such an advantage, she'd still have thrown the score at Campanini's head, anyway. And her aim was true.

"Disgraziata!" the tenor roared again. "Disgraziata! Cretina! Dio mio!"

"Cretino!" she hurled back at the injured tenor, fighting tears of anger and frustration as she stormed off stage. She would have said more, but she had to reach her dressing room, quickly. She refused to allow these men to see that they had reduced her to tears.

This business was so wicked, so cruel to anyone without the proper connections: European ones. And Geneva was as American as the town of Hoboken, where she'd been born. The opera world was amazed -- and probably annoyed -- that, with such inauspicious roots, she'd made it as far as she had. Abbey should have supported her. He would be sorry, some day. She swore it.

Abbey was screaming something else at her, but she could not hear him. Her head ached, and water filled her eyes. Her hands to her ears, she made her way her tiny dressing room. Once inside, she slammed the door so hard that the mirror above the vanity fell to the floor with a crash, shattering into dozens of jagged shards on the wood floor.

Her dressing room, the size of a closet! While Campanini, the pig, enjoyed the luxury of a veritable suite! Abbey would not dare to treat another soprano of, say, Nilsson's stature, in this shabby fashion. She seized the first handy object, which happened to be a Limoges vase of cobalt blue trimmed in gold leaf, full of the red roses that had arrived from Blaine that very morning, and threw it, with all of her strength, against the wall which had lately supported the hapless mirror. The result of her tantrum was a spectacular explosion of blue china slivers, water and roses which left its residue upon everything in the room, herself included. Fortunately for her, some remote, sane part of her reflected, she was unhurt by the event. Her slight relief, however, was momentary. Spent, she collapsed upon the worn brocade chaise, heedless of broken china and roses, and at last sobbed uncontrollably.

"Geneva!"

Not Blaine, she pleaded with her inner god. Please, not Blaine. I couldn't bear him, just now...

"Geneva!"

The summons from the wings was louder and more distinct. She recognized the voice, to her chagrin: It was Blaine, Lord Atherton. She allowed herself a small groan. Let him look for me, she thought, hoping he would fail in his quest. She pushed aside an errant rose which lay near her cheek. God, the musty odor of the upholstery, mingled with the sickeningly sweet smell of strewn roses, was nearly intolerable!

Blaine called to her a third time. He was getting nearer to her dressing room. Geneva sat up and scrubbed her face with her skirt. It would not do to allow him to see that she'd been crying. Where was her gremlin?

She liked to pretend that there was a gremlin who appeared whenever she needed him, a gremlin whose task it was to take all of her unwanted emotions, usually anger and frustration, and keep them in a little box. She'd invented him in her childhood to help her deal with her disappointments and other cruelties of life, and she discovered that he was as effective in her adulthood as he had been then. Perhaps even more effective, especially during her brief tenure as Garland Humble's wife. Her eyes dried by the gremlin's magic. Or was it the thought of Garland Humble? ***

*About the author: Author of 6 Historical romances, Carole Howey really ought to know better. No opera singers, her agent and editor told her. Absolutely no opera. The average reader doesn't get opera. You'll scare them off. So she had to write about an opera singer. Worse, she had to find the most unlikely fellow for this opera singer: an outlaw. Carole lives in Pennsylvania and is an active member, and past president, of Valley Forge RWA. Write to Carole Howey

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Author: Suzanne Barrett *Author's note: The setting for this novel is 1915 Ireland.


"What can I do for you, Miss?" a grizzled man with a bandaged foot turned toward the doorway.

Elizabeth swallowed. She'd interrupted a meeting of sorts. Suddenly she wanted to turn and run, but she resisted the impulse. Sunny needed attention. Like it or not, she was stuck here until she could have the mare reshod.

"My horse threw a shoe. Part of the nail is still in her hoof, and I don't think she can make it home. I thought you might--" She faltered as the standing man sent her a malevolent look.

"Fix it for you?" the smithy supplied. "I think we can arrange that. Sean, if you would see to it."

The man called Sean removed his boot from the chair and strode to the door.

Elizabeth jumped to one side as he squeezed through the narrow space between her and the wood frame.

He was tall, a good four inches above her five-foot nine. Broad-shouldered but lean, he had the most muscular forearms she had ever seen.

"You coming or not?" he barked.

Elizabeth's heart leaped. "Yes, I'm coming." She followed him out.

He pulled a leather apron from a peg, tied it on and stalked to the still smoldering pit. He tossed on two hard clods of peat and fanned the flame with bellows until the fire burned yellow-white.

"I'll need your horse over here." His voice was a rough baritone, the accent pure West Cork.

Elizabeth led Sunny to the forge and tied her to a post. She watched while he lifted the foot to examine it.

Without a word, he slipped a pair of pliers from the apron pocket and neatly extracted the nail. "You're lucky the hoof's not split. Would've been if you'd ridden her on hard ground." He scraped the area with a chisel, then selected a length of metal from a wooden box.

"I-- I was on the river road. It's soft there. I saw men marching--one of them looked like you."

Sean paused. "Did he, now?"

"He wore a haversack like yours and had dark hair like yours. It was you, wasn't it?"

He said nothing. Lifting the metal strip in long-handled tongs, he plunged it into the flames. When it glowed red hot, he laid it on the anvil and hammered it into a smooth oval.

"Those other men in the office were marching, too. I'll bet you're--" Too late she clamped her lips closed.

The blacksmith raised his head and flashed her a dark look. "Go on, finish it. You bet we're what?"

Elizabeth took a shaky breath. Her quick tongue had got her into trouble again. "Volunteers."

He turned back to the fire, poked at it for a moment, then hoisted the mare's leg between his own. "You go around asking so many questions and making statements like that, you're going to find yourself wishing you hadn't."

Elizabeth stiffened. "What do you mean?"

Sean pulled the tongs from the coals and positioned the glowing shoe on the hoof for an instant. The odor of singed horn permeated the air.

He stepped away from the mare and plunged the formed oval iron into a tub of cold water where it spat and hissed. Then he gave her a long, hard look. "I mean you come down here from your big house and look down your nose at the rest of us like we're--" He swore and turned back to his work.

Elizabeth gasped. Unable to think of what to say, she watched him fit the shoe. He hammered it until it lay flat on the anvil surface.

He worked quickly and with an economy of motion she admired. His large, bronzed hands gripped the hammer. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, and a light covering of dark, curling hair dusted each tanned forearm.

Her gaze traveled upward to his face. The scowl had softened until he looked almost pleasant. His hair was a deep chestnut, his green eyes wide-set and intense beneath straight brows. He had a firm mouth, the lower lip a trifle wider and slightly uneven. His smooth-shaven face was unlined save for faint creases at the corner of each eye. Not handsome, but with grooming he might be quite good looking.

The man had a presence about him she had not seen in any of the village boys. Or, she acknowledged, in any of the eligible young men who called on her or Caroline. A sense of purpose, even anger, lay just beneath the surface. It frightened her, but at the same time it sent a thrill of excitement through her limbs. She could not take her eyes off him.

"Had your fill?"

Elizabeth gasped. He stared at her, a smile curving his lips. A hot flush crept up from her collar.

"Do you like what you see?"

Elizabeth's face flamed at the laughter in the voice. He was making fun of her.

She stared at the hay-strewn floor. "I-- How much do I owe you? I can't pay you today, but I could bring the money tomorrow."

"You owe me nothing."

"But you must let me pay you!"

He laid the tongs on the anvil and picked up the newly formed shoe. "You couldn't meet my price."

Working quickly, he attached the shoe, and when he had finished and she had mounted, he thrust the reins into her hand and gave her a long,curious look. "Now go back to your big house with yourfancy clothes, and forget what you saw today." Before she could answer, he slapped the mare's rump.

His laughter echoed as the horse bolted out the barn door.

Sean swept the slag into a dustpan and emptied it into the scrap barrel, then hung the tongs on a nail beside the forge. Ten minutes had passed since the girl had left the shop, and for the life of him he couldn't figure why he should give her a second thought. She was pretty enough, but probably no more than fifteen or sixteen, even though she had some height on her. And a trim little ass, he remembered. A Protestant ass, no doubt, from the cut of her clothes and her Dublin Castle accent.

He slung his apron on a hook and strode toward the office. He wasn't interested in Proddy girls. No matter how attractive, they didn't figure in his plans.

Sean settled into a chair beside Mick Tierney and listened with half an ear as Tom went over the day's field operations. He had to force his mind onto the business at hand.

The girl's huge eyes were the most compelling he'd ever seen--irises the pale grey of a stock dove's underbelly, flecked with pure silver. Her brows arched like bird's wings, and that mass of hair--he'd wanted to sift those golden curls through his fingers.

Her hair would smell of honeysuckle and lilac.

A knot of heat spread through his belly, and he twisted his body toward the window. Thank Christ the lads couldn't know his thoughts.

What in the name of the saints had come over him? Her kind was as far removed from the likes of him as heaven from earth.©1997 ***

*About the author: Suzanne Barrett is a member of the Monterey Bay RWA. A recipient of the Regional Service Award and three-time Golden Heart finalist, Suzanne makes her home in the Santa Cruz mountains where she works full time as a facilities engineer and writes in the evenings and on weekends. A TERRIBLE BEAUTY is her ninth novel. Write to Suzanne Barrett. Visit Suzanne Barrett's home page.

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