Pistons and Pistols by Tonia Brown Read Free Book Online Page A

her head, her pout deepening as she said, “Nonsense. After everything you’ve done for me in the last few days, I feel it’s criminal of me to charge you at all. I should be the one paying you.” Besides, she didn’t want to service him for another hour. She had come, so she was done. Better a few stolen moments then waste more of her time.
    “Ruby, my lady, you never cease to amaze me with your grace and charm. Trust me when I say we will catch the Widow and that woman who calls herself a captain. I’ve had her description and the charges against her sent out all across the frontier on the wire.”
    “That quickly?” she asked, feigning ignorance on the subject.
    “Yes. These telegraphs are very fast things.” His voice was just as patronizing as Ruby expected. Men were so predictable. He cleared his throat before he explained further, still using that condescending tone, as if speaking to a child instead of the full-grown woman he had just fucked. “I’m afraid the reward for her capture isn’t very much, but those money-hungry cowpokes will do anything for a bit of gold. Someone will turn her in and your nephew with her. You just wait.”
    “You’re too kind.”
    “And you’re too beautiful. On second thought…” He paused as he slipped his hand to her overworked pussy. “I wouldn’t mind taking you up on that extra hour. That is, if you don’t have anything more important to do?”
    Ruby bit back her anger at his presumptuousness. “What could be more important? It would be my pleasure.”
    As he mounted her again, his cock already stiff with anticipation, Ruby returned to her musings on Rose. What exquisite torment would she reserve for the bitch? And not just her, but the whole accursed crew. Each and every one of them would pay for crossing her.
    Perhaps she should have been honest with Rose. Should have revealed, from the onset, what she was sending the redhead after. Ruby would still have held back the bit about the clockwork beast’s weapon, of course, but other than that, maybe she should have been more upfront. But would Rose have believed her? Would she have crossed the world in search of something so impossible as a lifelike clockwork man? Ruby had to admit, it was a very hard thing to believe.
    But after hearing the truth of it from good old ‘Doctor’ Grant Loquacious himself, she had no choice but to believe.
     

 
    Chapter 5
    Things Best Remembered
    In which Guppy learns the nature of love
     
    Gabriella followed Magpie through the dusty streets of the busy town, listening to the shouts of men and the whines of horses as she wondered what kind of mess she had made of her life. At one point in time, she had everything a young woman could want; a suitor who doted on her, a wealthy family, all the servants she could ever use. But she had left it all behind, and for what? To be dragged from port to dock, parading around like some common whore begging for work, then falling for the first man she meets only to have him ripped away from her without so much as an apology.
    In short, her life was horrible.
    It was probably the most horrible life she could ever imagine.
    Distracted by her worries, Gabriella was atop Magpie, almost knocking both of them to the ground before the big woman stopped her.
    “What’s bothering you, Guppy?” Magpie asked.
    Gabriella wondered if her concern were that obvious. “What do you mean?”
    “I mean, what’s eating you alive?”
    “I’m not sure I understand.” Which wasn’t true. Gabriella understood, she just didn’t feel like talking about it right now.
    Magpie sighed. “Guppy, honey, something hasn’t been right about you since this morning. One moment you’re making eyes at that young man of yours, and the next you’re ten fathoms deep in depression.”
    Standing straight, as if to assure Magpie that she wasn’t slouching out of sorrow, she shook her head and declared, “I am not!”
    Across the street, a group of horses lining a