Read Online Stop Angel! (A Frank Angel Western Book 8) by Frederick H. Christian - Free Book Online

“enemies”. It was
the Ute word that the Spaniards misspelled as Komantcid, and which the whites bastardized
to Comanche. They are really descendants of the Nermernuh, the Shoshone.’
    ‘ I see you do know about them,’ Nix said. ‘You are an unusual
man, Angel.’
    ‘ I’ll
bet you tell all the boys that,’ Angel said. ‘You’re a phony,
Nix!’
    ‘ Phony,
my dear fellow? What can you possibly mean?’
    ‘ All
this clap-trap about having studied the Comanch’, the honorable
past. You’re justifying yourself selling them guns that they kill
white settlers with. You may be rich, but it’s blood money you’re
rich on.’
    ‘ It
spends the same as the other kind,’ Nix said, getting up out of his
chair. ‘Come, we are keeping the lady waiting.’
    Angel followed him out to the
patio. It was cool now, and Victoria Nix wore a lacy, woolen shawl
around her formerly bare shoulders.
    ‘ You’ll
take coffee, Mister Angel?’ she asked. Her voice had the soft lilt
of the South in it, and Angel nodded, smiling. Victoria Nix was
slim and quite tall. Her bare arms were slender and faintly golden
from the sun. The rich glow of her auburn hair made her wide green
eyes seem darker, more somber. Once again, Angel was struck by her
sheer beauty, and the bizarreness of her marriage to Hercules Nix.
He watched as she nervously checked to see if her husband approved
of her speaking, the way her eyes dropped when he smiled blandly at
her.
    ‘ You’ll
have a brandy, Angel?’ Nix asked.
    ‘ I believe I will,’ Angel said, and when Nix handed him a
brandy glass with a generous measure of the golden liquid in it, he
discovered that it was French brandy, and very old. ‘You do
yourself proud,’ he remarked. ‘Isn’t it hard to freight all these
things in?’
    ‘ Not
hard,’ Nix said. ‘Expensive, certainly. But only that. If you are
prepared to pay for it, everything is obtainable. Without
exception.’
    Angel wondered whether he had
imagined Victoria Nix ’s shudder as her husband spoke these words. He certainly
did not imagine the way she smiled at him automatically, anxiously,
as he put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her once, in a
proprietary fashion, or the way she immediately disengaged herself
from his grasp. She sat in a chair immediately opposite Angel and
stared into her coffee cup. After an awkward silence, she looked
up.
    ‘ Will …
will you be staying long, Mister Angel?’ she asked.
    Nix intervened before Angel
could open his mouth. ‘Our guest can only stay the one night, my dear,’
he said. ‘He has to leave at daybreak.’
    ‘ If I’d
known the company would be this pleasant, I’d have planned a longer
stay,’ Angel said. ‘But I’m afraid I, ah, have no
choice.’
    It seemed to him that she
understood what he was saying, although he had been convinced she
had no idea of her husband ’s plans for him on the morrow. Just what was
causing the deep, swimming anxiety in her lovely eyes he could not
fathom. Whatever it was, it demonstrated that there was something
very, very wrong in the relationship between Hercules Nix and his
wife. She was in mortal fear of his very touch.
    Now Nix put down his coffee cup with a
decisive movement, and rose to his feet, stretching his arms wide
and yawning ostentatiously. As if on signal, Victoria Nix got up,
putting down her coffee unfinished. Angel stood up, but Nix waved
him back to his chair.
    ‘ No, no,
my dear fellow,’ he said. ‘Finish your coffee. Victoria and I
always turn in early. You stay here, enjoy the evening. Yat Sen
will bring you another brandy.’ He offered his arm to his wife, who
took it gingerly. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’ Nix said, and
smiled like a cobra.
    They walked toward the door, and as
they reached it, Angel heard Victoria Nix exclaim impatiently. A
moment-later, she came hurrying back.
    ‘ My
wrap,’ she said loudly. ‘I left it on the chair! Goodnight again,
Mister Angel!’
    He was about to echo her