Free The Men of Pride County: The Rebel by Rosalyn West Page B

the splendid sight of Noble Banning wearing nothing more than his uniform trousers. What made her heart race then had nothing to do with distress. Her wide gaze canvassed the rugged expanse of muscled shoulders and heavily black-furred chest, her hands itching to survey that awesome terrain with the same leisure her stare allowed.
    Then she glanced up into his face and salacious thoughts were derailed. Curiously, she followed the direction of his intense focus to a littering of glass shards upon the floor. She looked for a moment, not making sense of what she saw, until she realized that with theglass on the inside, the bullet would have had to come from without.
    Her father hadn’t fired the shot she heard. It had been fired at him.
    So why hadn’t he said so?
    Juliet took the revolver from the colonel’s hand, saying, “I’ll just take this before you shoot off your own foot.” He released it with reluctance and she immediately knew why.
    The chamber was cool, its rounds in place, its cartridges never discharged.
    He’d lied not only to his men, but also to her. And she was anxious to hear his explanation. Who was her father trying to protect with his silence? And why?
    She was left to draw her own conclusions, for as soon as the others left, her father held up a hand to forestall her questions.
    “To bed, Jules. It’s been a long, trying day for us all. Tomorrow is soon enough to plague me for my carelessness.” There was no mistaking the finality in his tone. The matter was closed.
    But even as she lay back on her thin mattress, her thoughts were spinning in defiance of sleep. Who would have anything to gain from shooting her father? Only one answer came readily to mind, one disturbing answer as apparent as it was prophetic. Only the Southerners would have a reason to hate her father enough to wish him dead. But which Southerner? One hiding in the shadows? Or the one who came boldly to their door?
    Had she been flirting with the man who even as he teased her was planning to murder her father?
    In the morning, she learned her father’s intention of sweeping the incident away, just as the window glass had quietly been disposed of. When she tried to bring it up again over a brief breakfast of coffee and biscuits, he made himself very clear.
    “We won’t discuss this matter any further, Jules. I’ll not have your vivid imagination making any more of it than it is. An accident.”
    “But Papa—”
    “No more, I said.”
    His tone brooked no argument, his look, no quarter. So Juliet finished her coffee in silence, hurt by his exclusion and worrying over what might prove serious enough for her father to wish her insulated from it. Was it personal embarrassment? He’d made such a strong stand on the side of the Rebels keeping their word. Did that keep him from naming them in the attack? How foolish to place one’s pride above one’s life. The more she considered, the more likely it became as the answer to his silence. If he were to admit an attack took place, all his Southerners would fall under suspicion. If a report were made, it could result in all of them going back to their incarceration at Point Lookout.
    But why was he willing to suppress the truth in order to protect these treacherousmen? Why was he willing to put his own life at risk?
    Had she the right to go against his wishes?
    Juliet wondered as she watched him sponge his uniform to restore a fresh appearance. She’d always thought him at his most handsome when turned out in a crisp uniform, his shoes blacked, his buttons gleaming, saber strapped to his side. She couldn’t picture him any other way, not as a clerk going to work in a city store nor as a government employee heading for his comfortable desk and reams of paperwork. This was her father, the vital, fighting man before her, the man her mother had fallen in love with and followed throughout the West at the cost of her own life. Not a man of pride but one of honor.
    A man who would not