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  An eRedSage Publishing Publication

  This book is a work of complete fiction. Any names, places, incidents, characters are products of the author’s imagination and creativity or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is fully coincidental.

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  Amorous Redemption

  An eRed Sage Publication All Rights Reserved Copyright © 2017

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  ISBN: 9781603105798; 1603105794 Amorous Redemption eBook version

  Published by arrangement with the authors and copyright holders of the individual works as follows:

  Amorous Redemption © 2017 by Faye Hall

  Cover © 2017 by Lyn

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  ebook layout and conversion by jimandzetta.com

  Amorous Redemption

  ***

  By Faye Hall

  TO MY READERS:

  Amorous Redemption will give you a walk through my own family’s history when they first arrived in Australia, including the very cattle station that remained in my family until a few years ago. The characters are bold. The scenery is rural and right in the middle of the beauty of the Australian outback. Follow the footsteps of Phoebe and Duncan and come experience a passion driven journey like no other.

  READER ALERT!:

  Phoebe Porter’s family needed her dead if they were to gain control of her substantial cattle station and vast fortune. She ran away from her home desperate to save her life, but she ran straight into the arms of the bounty hunter that had been sent after her. She fought against him the whole journey from Ravenswood back to her home but eventually all she could do was surrender her heart and body to him.

  Chapter One

  Ravenswood, North Queensland, Australia

  Spring 1885

  “What can I get you, sweetheart?” the bartender of the Ravenswood Hotel asked in a roughened tone.

  Phoebe Porter barely looked at the bearded man behind the bar, instead looking around her at the myriad of people that filled the establishment. Most of these men were obviously miners, or at the very least cattle station owners; the women were working girls looking for money to earn their keep. These weren’t people she wanted to be associating with, but she knew at this moment there was little choice. Her horse had been stolen earlier that morning and she’d been walking ever since in the gruelling North Queensland heat. She needed to stop for the night; she needed rest and refreshment. Part of her thought, too, that this establishment would be the best place for her to hide from the men chasing her. After all, who would look for a lady of wealth in such a bawdy establishment? Now she was here and drawing obvious attention from the curious onlookers in the hotel, Phoebe began to wonder if she should have kept walking.

  “Miss, either you order a drink or you have to leave,” the bartender instructed, interrupting her thoughts. “This is no rest house.”

  Turning to focus on the rough looking man dressed in simple brown trousers and white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, she tried to keep her nerves at bay. “W-Whiskey...please.”

  Reaching for a glass, the bartender poured the harsh brown liquor and slid the near full glass across the bar to her.

  “What’s a pretty lady like you doing in a place like this?” the bartender asked. “You don’t look like the usual sort we get in here.”

  Phoebe knew he meant the high-collared woollen riding gown she was wearing that covered her nearly from head to heel.

  “I need a room for the night, please,” she replied, her fingers fiddling with the glass in front of her.

  She didn’t want any trouble here. She just needed some rest before she again acquired a horse and go...go…

  She hung her head sadly. There was nowhere she could go…nowhere she could be safe.

  “I’ve got a room for you, sugar,” a man drunkenly slurred beside her, intruding into her thoughts.

  Being rudely brought back to where she was, Phoebe stepped away from the dust-covered man, hoping to avoid making eye contact with him so he might notice her lack of interest in his offer.

  He didn’t.

  “Don’t be shy, sugar,” the drunken man persisted, again moving closer to her. “I’ll be sure to pay you well.”

  “Pay me well?” she asked, finally lifting her eyes to look at the dirty, scruffy looking man beside her. His shirt front was half unbuttoned, the fabric dirty from the dusty environment as well as lack of washing. His hair was unkempt and he looked as if he hadn’t shaved or bathed in weeks. The thought of what this man was propositioning her with made her feel ill. She had only just managed to escape the clutches of one man; she didn’t want to fall victim to one again, especially not so soon.

  Reaching out to her, the man laid his tobacco-stained fingers on Phoebe’s forearm. “Ask any of the whores who work here, sugar. I always pay them well.”

  “Whores?” she asked as she pulled her arm away from this man, disgusted by what she was hearing. “You think I’m some whore for you to paw at? You think that’s why I’m here in this hole?”

  “Barney,” the bartender tried to interrupt but she wouldn’t allow him. “This woman is—”

  “You bastard!” Phoebe shouted at the man she’d heard called Barney, throwing the contents of her still full glass in his face. “Do I look as if I’m dressed as a woman who would take money from men for...for...for…?”

  Reaching out to him, she slapped him hard across the face. Never had she been so insulted.

  “How dare you assume that I’m nothing more than one of the bints who work here!” she yelled at the drunken man now holding his stinging cheek.

  “Who are you calling a bint, you tarted up trollop?” a brightly and scantily dressed, heavily made up woman demanded as she stepped toward them.

  “You best leave,” the bartender suggested, reaching for her and grabbing her by the wrist. “I don’t want no trouble in my bar.”

  Phoebe tried to struggle free from the bartender. “Let me go!” she screamed. “Don’t you touch me, you son of a bitch!”

  Fighting against the firm grip of the bartender, she struggled against him as he dragged her to the end of the bar.

  “There’s at least a dozen other hotel’s in the town that’ll put a respectable woman like you up for the night, Miss. We have no room for someone like you here.”

  Afraid of what or who might be waiting for her at a more respectable establishment, she continued struggling against him. She had picked the Ravenswood Hotel precisely because of its bad reputation. She knew that the men chasing her would never think to look for her here. But if she was made to leave…

  What if one of these more respectable establishments were run by someone who knew her family back in Inkerman? What if they knew her fiancé?

  Fear filling her at what may yet befall her if she stayed here, Phoebe pushed and kicked against the solid build of the bartender with all her might, desperate to free herself.

  The bartender suddenly lost his balance, stumbling and falling backwards against the patron-filled tables behind him. Feeling the grip on her wrist loosening as the larger man fell, she knew at last she was free. Before she could relax, though, she knew she had to get as far away from here as possible.

  Just as she was about to turn away from the chaos happening before her of scrambling and fighting patrons, Phoebe sud
denly felt a man’s hand grab her and pull her backwards.

  “You need to come with me, Miss Porter,” the man ordered firmly.

  Struggling against the stranger, she tried desperately to free herself. “Let me go, you bastard!” she screamed, hoping to be heard by one of the patrons in the hotel. “Let me go! Someone help me!”

  Her screams for help faded underneath the erupting commotion around her though.

  Feeling herself being lifted into the air by the man holding her and being swung over his shoulder like a sack of flour, complete fear filled Phoebe as she thought of all the horrors that may yet befall her in the hands of this man.

  “Stop struggling,” the man said, carrying her from the building and outside into the darkness, seemingly unaware of her fists bashing on his back.

  * * * * *

  Duncan MacAllester dismounted from his horse at the front of the public house, throwing the reins loosely over the railing at the front of the run down establishment, the dust from the streets covering his leather riding boots and the bottom of his denim jeans.

  “You’d best get out of town now, Simon,” he suggested to the older aboriginal man sitting on the horse beside him. “Heaven knows what the townspeople will do if they catch sight of you here.”

  Duncan threw a small bag of coins in the direction of his companion. “Thanks for your help. I couldn’t have found this one without you. I’ll come and see you on my way back to Inkerman.”

  Waiting until his aboriginal friend had ridden off into the darkness, he turned to look at the front door of the Ravenswood Hotel, a place he didn’t think to find any woman in, especially not one like Phoebe Porter.

  Duncan had been on the road for weeks now chasing this woman. When he first took this job he’d been made to believe it would only take several days to track her down. He quickly learned this wouldn’t be the case.

  This Miss Porter had given him a merry chase to say the least, and he was exhausted from being on the road for so long. Usually he didn’t mind having to track down a beautiful woman. He usually had them back with their families within a few days, but this job had proven to be harder than most. Every time he thought he was close to finding his bounty, she would somehow slip through his grasp. Duncan knew that had it not been for the aboriginal tracker he had sought help from, he would never have made it this far.

  Still, here he was at the Ravenswood Hotel, confused by where this woman had ended up.

  He had spent time some years back in the place, and he knew better than most that it was no place for a lady of any standing. It was barely suitable for the whores that lived there and serviced the customers.

  Judging by the loud sounds coming from the revellers inside, Duncan doubted it had changed much over the years since he’d last been here. Back then it was just one of many pubs in Ravenswood full of rough miners who barely saw a woman a few times a year, and whores that could find work nowhere else in this dusty town. He doubted it was any different now.

  The building was run down more than most of the inns in Ravenswood, and the people it attracted were usually far more unkempt than most. The interior was very basic, not bothering with the elaborate excessiveness that some of the other’s did to attract their clientele. And the liquor...the liquor was hard and cheap.

  Of all the establishments in this mining town, this was the last one he thought to find Miss Porter in. Knowing what he did about her family and the life of money she had come from, he was surprised she even managed to travel so far from her home town, not to mention stay eluded from her family and fiancé. He didn’t know the full story behind her runaway, nor did he care. It wasn’t his job to care about the women he was sent after to find.

  And that is all Miss Porter was.

  She was a job like all the others were over the last few years; only this time she was to be his last.

  Duncan only had to return this shrinking violet back to her family then he would finally be free to return to the life he once knew, the life of comfort he’d once taken so much for granted.

  Opening the hotel doors, he ducked his head just in time as a jug of ale flew past his head, and crashed against the wall.

  “What the hell…,” he cursed, suddenly looking up at the scene before him.

  Tables lay broken before him and chairs and jugs of ale were being thrown through the air. Looking around, he saw whores pulling at each other’s gowns and hair while also fighting with their male patrons. There were men with cuts and bruises covering their faces, some with blood trickling from their foreheads, some lying unconscious on the wooden floor.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Duncan asked, pulling aside one of the many dishevelled whores.

  “That trollop over there...she came in here calling us women bints before she attacked our bartender...just wait till I get my hands on her…”

  Following the woman’s direction, he looked out across the brawling crowd to the black haired woman struggling with the man holding her and he knew instantly this was the woman he’d been chasing. She stood out clearly in her starched green woollen travelling gown, her hair tied back in a tight bun. Watching as she reached for a bottle of alcohol from the bar, her aim, the man’s already bloodied head, he knew he could let this go on no more.

  Pushing through the crowd toward her, Duncan’s hands went around her small waist, lifting her curvaceously slender body up, and threw her on to his shoulder as he would a sack of wheat.

  “Stop struggling,” he chided her. “If you stay here any longer you’ll find yourself behind bars.”

  Her fists thumped hard against his back. “Let me go you son of a bitch!”

  “Honey, we can do this the hard way or the easy way. Either way I’m taking you home!”

  Ignoring this woman’s continued struggles and assaults against him, he carried her from the hotel. Stopping at his horse, he lowered her to the ground. His hands still gripping tight around her small wrist, his gaze immediately went to her deep brown eyes.

  “What the hell did you think you were doing in there?” he asked, as he pulled his stare away from her briefly. He adjusted the horse’s saddle quickly, knowing he had to get this woman as far away from here as possible. “Surely even a spoiled little rich girl like you must know folks in these parts don’t take kindly to people who make trouble.”

  She continued struggling against him as her closed fists attacked him. “Who are you?” she demanded. “What the hell do you want with me?”

  Finishing the adjustments he was making to the saddle, Duncan turned to look at her front on, his hands going to her assaulting hands trying to stop her. Finally grabbing her by the wrists he stilled her, his eyes studying this woman he’d been sent to find.

  Her skin was so pale, almost like powder. She felt so soft under his hardened fingers that for a fleeting moment he was concerned that his tight grip might bruise her. He didn’t understand why he would care about such a thing; after all this woman was a stranger to him. Still he knew he didn’t want to intentionally cause her any pain. To him, a beauty such as this woman should never know what such a thing felt like.

  Feeling her boot heel stomping hard into his foot, his attentions pulled away from this woman’s intoxicating beauty and back to the matter at hand. He needed to remember why he was here with her in the first place. He wasn’t here by choice. He was here because he was paid to be.

  “My name is Duncan MacAllester,” he answered her. “I’m the man your family hired to find you and take you back home to your fiancé.”

  Hearing the noisy patrons escaping the hotel just behind them, he swiftly swung up into the saddle on his horse, pulling her up quickly to sit in front of him side-saddle.

  Feeling her again struggling against him, his hold around her waist tightened.

  “Will you stop struggling!”

  “You can go to hell, you miserable bastard!” Miss Porter yelled at him, still fighting against him.

  Desperate to hold her struggles at bay, an
d knowing they had to be away from this place as soon as possible, Duncan tightened his hold on her again.

  “Lady, I suggest you stop your wiggling against me, or you may well get more than you bargained for,” he uttered sternly, his lips close to her ear.

  She seemed to pay no heed to his warning as she continued fighting against him, her back and rear brushing against him in a way most men would pay good money for.

  His frustration grew. He had to find a way to keep her still before she spooked the horse and attracted even more unwanted attention from the already curious onlookers. Desperate, Duncan did the only thing he knew would keep her still. His fingers firmly gripped her chin as he lifted her head at a slight angle and kissed her hard and fast on the lips.

  “Now you stay still, Miss Porter, or you may well be getting more than just a kiss.” he said, as the slight feeling of drowning in the darkness of her eyes started to consume him.

  “W-What do you want from me?” she asked, her struggles dwindling, her tone obviously nervous.

  Shifting her to sit astride the horse, he righted her in the saddle, pushed her curvaceous rear against his crotch, and held her back tight against his chest.

  “I told you. Your parents hired me to take you back home.”

  Suddenly a loud bang rang out as the door of the Ravenswood Hotel was thrown open. Angry patrons billowed out onto the streets, their guns raised and firing into the sky.

  Duncan kicked his already spooked horse in the rear flanks, steering them away from the Ravenswood Hotel and away from any more unwanted danger.

  * * * * *

  Duncan pulled the horse to a stop several miles southeast of the dusty township of Ravenswood. Before dismounting, he reached into his saddlebag and pulled forth a short length of rope which he used to tie his bounty’s hands together in front of her.