Warming Emerald: The Red Petticoat Saloon

by Maren Smith

  Sing…

  Not like… Garrett. And just that fast, it became the seduction of Garrett’s low voice in her head, inviting her to open for him like the flowers he kept bringing her. Garrett, nibbling kisses along the shell of her ear as his fingers dipped into the Emerald well of her body, commanding in sensual whispers for her to yield her pleasure to him. Garrett rising over her, his weight held up on bracing arms while he moved to the undulating rhythm of her gasps and arches and sighs.

  Throwing her arm across her eyes, Lydia fought to banish him from her mind. She clutched the pillow and her own hair to keep her fingers from wandering down into places they had no business going, especially not with Paquah sleeping right here. She tried to slow her breathing. She tried to pretend as if her nipples weren’t pulsing to the heated pulls of a man’s attentive mouth and her sex wasn’t clutching repeatedly to hold something that simply wasn’t there.

  Four more, coaxed Garrett’s voice in the panic of her mind. I’ve got four more just like these, and they’re yours for half an hour upstairs in your bed.

  She was a traitor. A horrible traitor to the man she had once loved so much that she had laid down beside his lifeless body and refused to let anyone take him. Not for three days. In the full summer’s heat. Until finally, the smell of his decomposition forced the elders to physically restrain her while they attended to his funeral needs. A good wife would have seen him properly bathed and dressed for the journey ahead. A good mother would not have ignored her then infant son’s cries for nourishment for almost a full month, during which time she could only lie in her bed, wishing she were dead too. Eventually, her mother lost patience and slapped her out of that stupor. But by then, too much time and too little nourishment had taken its toll on her body. Her milk was gone and it had fallen to another to nurse her baby for her.

  Bad wife. Bad mother. And when the soldiers came, bad Indian too for fighting her capture to the point that her own father had to be murdered in defense of her. And to top it all off, foisted upon the God-fearing graces of a foster family who didn’t want her, she discovered she made for just as horrible a white person.

  But she made a fairly decent whore, particularly when she put her buckskins on. White men, she’d very quickly learned, loved the idea of fucking a savage. Taming her with every pounding stroke of their cocks. Wrestling her down, pinning her in place. Teaching her civility with either pleasure or pain. If she fought them, so much the better. If she bit or drew blood, sometimes they’d back off, but sometimes they delighted in growing crueler still. She brought it on herself for fighting in the first place, and she knew it.

  That must mean she deserved it.

  Chapter Three

  “Candy!” Paquah cried, tearing his hand out of hers and running the last few feet across the street. He clambered up onto the wooden sidewalk, nearly tripping Mayor Rockwell who was on his way out of Singleton’s Mercantile with both arms fully laden in packages. A father himself, while he might not have been anticipating having to leap over a small child at that particular moment, he reacted quickly enough to avoid trampling the boy as he raced to press his hands to the mercantile window.

  “Paquah!” Lydia scolded. She raced after him, but the mayor, recovering both his balance and his surprise, only laughed.

  “It’s all right,” he assured her. “All that tasty goodness is enough to make even the big boys, like us—” He tossed Paquah a wink and a smile. “—lose sight of our manners. Which is your favorite?”

  Small for his age, his customary shyness around people he didn’t know made Paquah look even younger as he pointed to a jar of black, red and white striped peppermint candies.

  “I like the humbugs too,” the mayor whispered, conspiratorially. “Here.” Shuffling his small mountain of packages to one arm, he dug into his pocket for a penny. “Have one for me.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Lydia tried, “but we don’t need—”

  Grabbing the penny before it could be retracted, Paquah dashed into the store.

  “Paquah!” Abandoned on the sidewalk, Lydia blushed.

  “Boys will be boys,” Mayor Rockwell said with a grin, and didn’t even seem to mind that no gratitude had been acknowledged.

  “Thank you,” Lydia conceded, trying hard to force her tense body to relax. It was an automatic reflex these days. Whenever she had to come out into public and she ran into customers, or even into those—like the mayor—who never had been, her back still stiffened and her jaw set so hard that it made her teeth hurt. Paquah was four years old. That gave him a good excuse for his rudeness; she had none at all, but knowing that didn’t make mingling with the townsfolk any easier. Flushing hotter, not knowing what to say and wanting even less to stand awkwardly in front of him while she floundered in the not saying of it, she tried to pass him. “Excuse me.”

  Mayor Rockwell didn’t exactly catch after her, but he stopped her nonetheless when he called out, “You should come by sometime. I know Louise, ah…Lapis would love to see you. Or any of the gems, for that matter.”

  Halfway through the mercantile’s front door, Lydia stiffened all over again. Reluctantly, she turned back to him.

  Mayor Rockwell was still smiling and friendliness still existed in his eyes, and yet both somehow seemed a little thinner. As if he’d said more than he knew he ought to have and now already regretted it. “She misses you all. It would genuinely brighten her day if any of the gems would come pay her a visit.”

  Jewel would. Nettie, Amy, Dottie, and even Opal too, if they knew the offer had been extended. None of the other gems would, however, and they both stared at one another knowing it. It wasn’t that the Red Petticoat gems wanted to shun her, but while Lapis might be married now and settled into respectability, for most of the women in Culpepper Cove, once a whore, always a whore. The more Lapis kept contact with her wanton past, the harder it would be for her to integrate herself with the other respectable wives and mothers.

  “Maybe I could come by,” Lydia said, but she knew she wouldn’t.

  The mayor knew it too. He kept his smile, but his eyes were already shuttering. Like a true politician, he kept his civility. “We look forward to seeing you.”

  Ducking, the lie already weighing heavily upon her, Lydia pushed into the store.

  Singleton’s Mercantile was long and narrow. A wide assortment of goods filled up the racks and shelves along both walls, while a large display of fabrics stacked up high on the tables that lined the middle. At a little past noon, the store was far from empty. Lydia recognized most of the other patrons. Ladies who turned their backs and pretended not to notice her from the moment she stepped inside. Good family men who never missed one of Pastor Black’s Sunday services and yet still found the money and the time to pay a gem a visit when they thought their wives didn’t know. Hypocrites, all of them. And then she spotted Myron Crankshaw and—oh God—her gaze settled on the pack of four women, all dressed in their modest gowns and respectable bonnets, clustered around Millicent Crankshaw, laughing and chatting and hanging on her every word like favored courtiers around their queen.

  Her stomach flipped and twisted. Dropping her gaze, Lydia moved quickly out of the doorway and into the far aisle before any of them noticed her.

  Finding Paquah wasn’t hard. Jumping up and down by the window, he excitedly watched as Sam Singleton lifted down the jar of striped humbug candies. When he held up his penny, Sam took the lid off the jar and let the little boy help himself.

  “Careful,” the shop keep said with a smile. “Don’t drop them.”

  Two candies disappeared into Paquah’s mouth just as fast as he got them into his hand. He grinned, lips working as he rolled them over his tongue from cheek to cheek.

  “Ma’am,” Sam said, shifting his smile to her as she drew closer. “How can I help you today?”

  “I’ve got a few things to pick up.” She dug a short list out of her reticule and passed it over.

  Adjusting his spectacles on his n
ose, he hummed and nodded as he read over the items. “I sold the last tin of Davis’s cold cream this morning, but I might have a tin or two of Goss’s Otto of Rose. Are you opposed to switching manufacturers?”

  “That would be fine.” Lydia hesitated. “I also need to order some shoes, if you can.”

  Sam hummed again, but nodded. It was well known that Burton Fidget, the town cobbler, didn’t cotton to Indians in his store. He leaned towards her slightly and lowered his voice. “I’ve got a nephew about his size. I tell you what. Bring me one of his shoes, we’ll take a measurement and I’ll go order a pair of shoes for my ‘nephew’.”

  That trip to the counter would take her right by Millicent, and the thought of bringing Paquah anywhere within her sniping range was enough to make her sick. She should leave. If she returned in an hour or so, the Crankshaws would be gone. But business at the Red Petticoat would be picking up soon. The longer she spent out running errands, the less money she would make and clothes, soap and especially shoes weren’t cheap. Particularly not for a child who outgrew them almost faster than she could afford to ship in new ones.

  Not to mention it grated unbearably to flee any place on account of that pinch-faced biddy.

  Her mouth flattened and she squared her shoulders. Catching Paquah by one arm, she steered him into the nearest corner between the candy display and a long rack of shelves, packed with boxes, tins and canvas sacks of coffee, grains and other essential food supplies. “Stay right here,” she told him firmly, untying his right shoe and slipping it off his foot. “Hands in your pockets. I’ll be right back.”

  Sucking his candy, he obediently slipped his hands into his coat pockets. There was so much that could go wrong with this, and Lydia knew it. But as much as she didn’t want to put her child within that viperous woman’s striking range, she didn’t want Millicent to think she could make her run either.

  Palming the shoe, her spine broomstick straight almost to the point of pain, she followed Sam to the customer counter. She tried to stay as far from the other women as she could, but just as she dared to think she might have slipped by unnoticed, Millicent’s false-honey voice sang out, “Gracious, Lydia dear, is that you? You’ve put on weight!”

  One hand went to the trim waist of her corset before Lydia could catch herself. Heat scalded up through her chest, burning her face. “Good morning, Millicent.”

  Millicent Crankshaw smiled. Lydia had once heard Nettie tell Paquah a story about a crocodile who liked to do the same. She imagined that smile must have looked similar to this one—simpering and yet toothy all at once.

  “Closer to noon, really,” the older woman said, while her tight cluster of friends exchanged looks. “I imagine a woman in your profession must stay up and, therefore, sleep in to all kinds of lazy hours. So I can see how this might seem very much like morning to someone like you.”

  Abigail Curbe, first among her tight group of friends, tsked and turned away. Violet Peabody, the barber’s wife, tittered.

  “Here you are.” Sam lay a slip of paper and pen on the counter in front of Lydia, sympathy in his eyes. He said nothing to Millicent, though. He needed her business too much to ally himself with a whore, regardless of how badly she might be treated in his shop. Not a lot of people liked Millicent Crankshaw, but she did have social influence and when she spoke, everyone paid attention.

  Lydia grit her teeth, biting back any number of acidic comments. She had nothing to gain by antagonizing the woman. She would keep her mouth shut, her head down and just get through this as fast as possible. “Good afternoon, then.”

  “What brings you slithering out amongst the civilized folk?” Millicent asked, venturing close enough to peer over Lydia’s shoulder as she lay Paquah’s shoe on the page.

  “Shopping.” Lydia traced its outline. The faster she placed her order, the sooner she could get out of here. She resisted the urge to glance over her shoulder, not wanting to alert Millicent to Paquah’s presence, but she seemed to sense the direction Lydia’s thoughts had turned.

  “Where’s the mongrel?” she suddenly asked. “Did you leave him at home? On the one hand, I shudder to think what kind of education you’re giving that child and yet, being the son of a savage, such things must come quite naturally him.”

  Sam Singleton blanched while a low murmur circled amongst Millicent’s friends.

  From the narrow rear of the store, came a single voice of protest. “Hey, now…”

  Millicent barely took her eyes off Lydia, not even to acknowledge her husband’s objection. “Load the wagon, Myron.”

  Short, thin, on the back side of middle aged with more grey in his short hair than brown these days, Myron Crankshaw came down the aisle with a rare spark of embarrassed outrage reddening his face. “That’s uncalled for, Millie, and you know it.”

  “I said, load the wagon,” Millicent repeated, her tone dropping to frigid levels. Now she did look at Myron and kept on staring until, ducking his head, he stalked past her and out the door. “And don’t interrupt. I swear—” She checked her gathered friends to make sure everyone was still nodding along with her. “—sometimes your manners are worse than the Indians.” The door shut behind Myron hard enough to shudder the glass. Turning back to Lydia, she noticed Sam frowning at her behind the counter. “And you. What are you doing just standing idle? Get out there and help him! We don’t have all day.”

  Shoving the shoe into her reticule now that the trace was complete, Lydia pushed the page back to Sam with the instruction that he order shoes one size larger than Paquah needed. At the rate he was growing, if they didn’t fit by the time they arrived, they would soon enough.

  “I’m sorry,” Sam murmured as he quickly wrote her order down next to the trace.

  Lydia didn’t react. She hardly expected anyone here to speak out on her behalf anyway.

  “Why are you apologizing?” Millicent half-laughed and half-snapped. “She’s a whore. One need only take a look at that bastard son of hers—”

  Lydia rounded on her, hissing, “He’s not a bastard!” She should have bit her tongue, until it bled if necessary, anything to keep that look of vicious delight from lighting up Millicent’s face.

  “Oh, but he is,” Millicent affirmed, stepping right up to Lydia. The bell of their skirts crushed together, forcing Lydia to step back. Millicent only stepped closer still, hunting her down the narrowness of that grocery aisle. A rabbit retreating from the sniffing muzzle of a hungry coyote. “Bastard son of a dirty, thieving, savage of a man… if a red-skin could even qualify as such. Never married, not in the sanctity of any decent church and certainly not before the eyes of God. Tell me, was it awful, the first time he spread your legs to rut himself in between? Or did you like it?”

  Lydia could have slapped her. Searing heat burned up her face and through her brain. She knotted her hands in her skirts, but already she was taking that single advancing step that brought her within ominous reach of Millicent. Her body turned sideways, diminishing Millicent’s chances of striking anything vital in return. She wanted to hit the other woman so much and so hard that she knocked that smirk right off Millicent’s smarmy face!

  But she didn’t.

  You’ll watch your manners in public, Gabe had told her the last time Millicent had trapped her outside the protection of the Red Petticoat. That episode had dissolved into a screaming fit from which Lydia had literally had to be picked up and dragged from. Struggling, kicking and swearing. All the way back to the Red Petticoat and up to her room, where Gabe immediately pinned her across the foot of her bed, bared her fanny and then blistered it.

  You’ll watch your manners in public, Gabe warned, or I’ll watch them for you.

  Staring at Millicent now, Lydia’s fists curled so tightly that the tension made her knuckles pop. The sheer physical pleasure of slugging her would almost be worth the inevitable consequences to follow. Unfortunately, she never got the chance.

  A sudden clatter of bumping glass and the scattering r
ain of marble-like candies bouncing across the floor stopped everything. From behind the displays that lined the center of the narrow shop, bright red and white-striped humbugs came rolling out in all directions with Paquah in crouched pursuit. That he hadn’t kept his hands in his pockets and now knew he was in trouble was all over the look he shot his horrified mother as he chased the candies down. His little hands unable to hold onto more than a few at a time, he began stuffing them in his pockets.

  “Thief!” Millicent shouted, recoiling flat up against the counter when he chased three candies right up to her feet. “There! Did you see? What have I been telling you?”

  Ducking past her, Lydia grabbed Paquah by his jacket before he could vanish under the woman’s dress in determined pursuit. “Stop it!” she spat at the venomous woman, her hands shaking as she took the candies from his hands and pockets. “He isn’t stealing anything. It’s an accident!”

  “He’s a savage!” Millicent spat back.

  “He’s four years old!”

  “It doesn’t matter his age!” The older woman’s chin hiked, her hazel eyes sparking with sadistic pleasure. “Four or forty, you can’t change his blood. Eventually, he’ll grow up and his fate will be exactly the same then as it is now. Shot or hanged, everybody knows there’s only one way to deal with a redskin!”

  Lydia gasped, but she never got the chance to respond. A hand clamped on her shoulder, startling both women, neither of whom had noticed when Garrett Drake had entered the store. They noticed him now, however. He was big and he was tense, and his grey eyes were as hard as flagstone marble on a face that held no expression whatsoever as he pushed Lydia aside and calmly stepped into her place.

  Millicent looked him up and down, hiking her chin higher. “What do you want?” she demanded. “No one was speaking to you.”

  Garrett smiled then, and for Lydia, that was almost worse than seeing him with no expression at all.