Caelan had looked around. “Who? The lady in the stand over there? She’s got to be fifty, if she’s a day.”
Gavan chuckled. “Didna be daft. Lizzie is our bride.” He pointed to the woman who he was convinced was theirs.
“Lizzie?” he whispered back.
“Aye.”
“Wait, ye didna mean the lass they have on trial?” His eyes widened, and his mouth actually hung open. “Are you insane?”
“Aye, one and the same,” he’d said. “She’s perfect.”
“She’s a cattle rustler and a bank robber…”
“With a glorious figure, red hair, green eyes, and a fiery spirit. Ye’ve got to watch her.” Gavan had lowered his voice. “Good God, Caelan. Think of the sons we’ll breed on her.”
Caelan might have argued further, but Lizzie had turned to swear at a man who was heckling her from the audience.
Watching his friend, it was all Gavan could do to keep from laughing.
Caelan, who had a gift for gab and was often teased that he should have been Irish, appeared dumbstruck. He couldn’t speak, it seemed; he couldn’t utter a single word, much less put together a coherent sentence.
Fuck, yes! He’d been right. He was as surprised and fascinated by the female outlaw as Caelan seemed to be.
“As I said, she’s perfect, is she not?” asked Gavan.
Caelan nodded. “Fuck, yeah. When ye pick ‘em...” Shaking his head, he continued, “Steer rustler, bank robber? What other crimes is she charged with? How are we to make her ours with shackles on her wrists?”
“Then, ye agree?” Gavan asked, ensuring Caelan was on the same page as him, a page on which they would start the new chapter of their lives, all three of them.
His gaze never left Lizzie. “She’s a wild one but, there, do ye see it? She’s scared as fuck.”
Caelan made a funny sound in his throat. “Brave.”
Gavan knew Caelan saw it, too. “I figure, when they sentence her, we go the judge and offer to buy out her sentence, like they did with indentured servants. Only one of us will marry her.”
His eyes lit up. “Prison or marriage? Yer the best prospect, son of the laird, and all that.”
Gavan rolled his eyes at the laird term, for they were thousands of miles, and a lifetime, away from where he’d ever be called that. “Yer sure?”
Caelan had nodded. “I’ll not see her behind bars.”
After that, the two men had sat silently as they focused and watched the trial.
On the last day, when the sentence was pronounced, both Caelan and Gavan found it difficult to breathe.
“Do something,” Caelan hissed at Gavan, who nodded before shouldering his way thought the crowd. “Jail time, maybe, but hung? No fucking way.”
“Didna worry,” Gavan said, although he was just as fucking furious as Caelan. “I’ll handle it. Did ye bring the rings with ye?”
The silver Gavan had referred to in his cable had been a set of matching wedding bands, all with an intricate design they’d had made in Mohamir when they’d first decided to share a wife. They had a diamond and two rubies channel set into their bride’s ring.
“Aye, just as ye asked,” he said, patting the pocket of his vest. “I’ll go to the livery and make sure our horses are ready.”
Caelan was as eager and focused as Gavan. Lizzie would be theirs. She just didn’t know it yet. And neither did the judge.
“Yer Honor! Yer Honor!” Gavan called in his thick Scottish brogue. “Gavan MacLean.”
“Not from around here,” the judge muttered before turning to face him. “Now, you’ve seen American justice at its best, swift and decisive.”
It was all Gavan could do not to punch him. He balled his fists and focused on his goal, getting Lizzie wedded to them and her neck safe from a noose. Then, they’d get her in their bed. His balls ached from the wanting of her.
He considers this justice? Gavin thought but held his tongue.
A beautiful young woman was scheduled to die in less than twenty-four hours, unless he could convince the judge to go along with their plan.
He and Caelan belonged to a communal ranching organization known as Bridgewater. They believed a woman was inherently safer if she was married to more than one man. Life in the Montana Territory was uncertain, at best, and calamity could strike at any time. Having two husbands to guide, pamper, shelter, protect, and cherish her, and any children that might be born of the union, was a concept the men and women of Bridgewater had adopted.
But, if he was to get the judge to approve his plan, he would need to present him with a more conventional proposal than his intention of both he and Caelan being her husbands.
“Actually, no. Surely, ye canna mean to hang her? She’s a thief, yes, but not a killer. In fact, she and her gang have never even fired a shot.”
“The law is crystal clear; if you steal horses, or cattle, in the western territories of these United States, you forfeit your life, by hanging. The law makes no allowance for the gender of the outlaw,” said the judge.
There had to be a way to get the judge to reconsider and commute her sentence. Lizzie was meant to be with he and Caelan. He was sure of it. When Gavan had learned that the leader of Morgan’s Marauders was a woman, he’d been as stunned as the rest of the town and went to watch the trial. What had unfolded had been disconcerting, and arousing.
“Elizabeth Morgan wasn’t convicted of just stealing. She’s been rustling in this area for years. Look, son, I know you’re new to our country. But, out here, a man’s horse, or his cattle, can be the difference between life and death. There are no exceptions. Well, except for one, and I don’t think that applies.”
The judge wasn’t unkind or, even, Gavan suspected, unsympathetic, he was merely a man who saw the law as absolute but, maybe, just maybe, he was opposed to killing a woman. If
