Sweet Savage Love

by Rosemary Rogers

  “I hate storms! They—they terrify me, and remind me of—unpleasant things.”

  A particularly vivid flash of lightning made her wince and she sprang to her feet.

  “I’m going back to the wagon—I’m sorry to be such a coward, but I really can’t stay out here in this.” She seemed to pull herself together with an effort. “Goodnight, Mr. Morgan. Your argument was—interesting.”

  He came easily to his feet, leaving Ginny to scramble up by herself.

  “I’m sorry if I said anything to upset you, ma’am.”

  But he didn’t sound sorry, Ginny thought angrily—he didn’t sound sorry at all! And what had upset Sonya? Was it only the storm?

  Sonya was saying stiffly that she wasn’t upset by any means, and that it was not necessary for Ginny to come with her just because she was unreasonably afraid of loud noises.

  “Carl will be back soon, I’m sure—he’d be sorry if he missed seeing you tonight,” she said to Ginny, sounding her sweet, considerate self once more.

  Reluctantly, Ginny watched her go, too much aware of Steve Morgan’s closeness to her. But I’m not afraid of him, she told herself sternly. I will not let him think that I don’t trust myself to be alone with him.

  “Would you like to continue our discussion?” she asked him coolly enough. “I can assure you that I am not as easily upset as my stepmother, and storms do not distract me in the least.”

  She sat down by the fire again, and wondered if she had really noticed a slight hesitation in his manner before he joined her.

  “The discussion was pointless—you said so yourself.” The note of harshness in his voice made her glance at him in surprise.

  “But you seemed to know so much about the Mexicans, why should you feel ashamed of expressing your views?”

  He leaned forward without speaking to pour himself a cup of coffee, but Ginny could see a muscle in his jaw twitch as if he fought to hold back words he might regret. Or was it—the thought struck her, making her eyes widen—was it because he felt as disturbed by her presence as she did in his?

  Sitting back at that moment he met her glance, and she noticed that he was frowning.

  “My views, as you call them, happen to be shared by most of the Mexican people,” he said abruptly, as if he had only just heard her question. “But I’m afraid they’re not of much importance to many people in this country. For your own sake though, I hope you’ll not think of visiting Mexico until it’s all over, and there’s no more danger for unwary foreign visitors.”

  “What do you mean—until it’s all over? Until what is over?” A pulse pounded in her temples and she told herself it was anger—rage that he should dare presume to advise her. “Really, Mr. Morgan, I’d think you are hardly the person to warn me about danger—and a danger which, in this case, I’m sure does not exist. The French army is more than too much for a few peasants with few or no weapons, I’m sure! And,” she continued, her voice rising in spite of herself, “if I do decide to visit Mexico some day you may be sure that I shall do so, without asking anybody’s permission first!”

  “Mexico, in case you did not know it, is in a state of war!” he said between clenched teeth. “Have you ever been in a war, ma’am? Or seen its effects? And I can assure you that if there’s shooting, no one will stop first to make sure whether their targets are male or female! And furthermore—the Mexicans have had their bellyful of foreigners—it’s a matter of time before the Juaristas take over the government again, and I’d hate to think of anyone as pretty as you having to face a firing squad, which might well happen if you decide to do anything so stupid and foolhardy as visit Mexico at a time like this!”

  “You overheard us then! You’re contemptible! How dare you sneak up on other people’s private conversations and then presume to butt in?”

  His face had grown dark and forbidding with anger, and she thought his eyes almost shot sparks of blue flame at her.

  “Goddammit! Do whatever you want, then. And since I don’t want to be forced into a fight with your beau right now, I think I’ll leave—before I do something I might regret later.”

  Carl Hoskins came up just as Steve Morgan stalked angrily away, and as they happened to pass each other, Carl had opened his mouth to make some scathing comment. One look at Morgan’s face, the dangerous, almost challenging look in his eyes made Carl clamp his jaws together as he made his way towards Ginny. This was no time for a fight—not here, not now—but some day, as he’d already vowed, he’d take care of Steve Morgan!

  One look at Ginny’s flushed face, with tears of anger making her sea green eyes seem even larger, was almost enough to make Carl change his mind.

  “Ginny! What’s wrong? What has he said to you? By God, if he’s done anything to upset you I’ll—”

  “Oh, for Heaven’s sakes, Carl, there’s no need to look so forbidding!” She had spoken more sharply than she had intended, and bit her lip in exasperation. How stupid, to let him push her into such a state! How he must be laughing now, as he thought how easily he could upset her.

  A tendril of pale copper hair fell across Ginny’s cheek and she brushed it away irritably, softening her tone with an effort.

  “Oh, Carl, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to snap at you, but—it was only a silly argument, that’s all. I’m afraid I let myself get baited into losing my temper.”

  Mollified, he dropped to the ground beside her, taking both her hands in his own and stroking them lightly as if he wished to smooth out the tension he could feel in them.

  “I hate to see you this way, Ginny…all tense and upset. I hate to think that he’s done this to you! I’m going to tell him to stay away from you…a man like Morgan is worse than an animal, he’s no fit company for a lady! Why does he make a point of annoying you this way?”

  With an irritated exclamation, Ginny pulled her hands away from his.

  “Are you implying that I encourage him to annoy me? Why, I—I’ve never known a man that I more cordially detest! And if you think…”

  Carl’s handsome face showed amazement at her outbreak; she saw frown lines come to his forehead as he interrupted her quickly and almost roughly.

  “Ginny, Ginny! What’s gotten into you? I made no such allegation, I know how much you hate that man, almost as much as I despise him and his kind myself! Please, sweetheart, don’t let us have a quarrel!”

  Ginny resorted to subterfuge.

  “Forgive me, Carl! I—I swear I don’t know what’s the matter with me this evening. It—it must be the coming storm. There, I could vow I felt a drop of rain…”

  Carl could not resist the appeal in her upturned face, those wonderful eyes that still sparkled with tears. He felt masculine and protective, all at once.

  Helping her to her feet, Carl took Ginny back to her wagon, and he was surprised and elated by the way she responded to his good-night kiss. Instead of accepting it passively as she usually did she flung her arms around his neck and pressed her body against his. He noticed that she was trembling, and in spite of all his good intentions, he felt his desire for her rise. How tiny her waist felt under his hand, how firm her small breasts thrusting against his chest!

  He raised his head to murmur hoarsely to her, but she said urgently, “Kiss me again, Carl, kiss me!” and then in a small whisper, “I feel so frightened tonight, so lonely, I wish you could stay with me for a while and talk to me—”

  With a groan of mingled passion and frustration, Carl bent his head again and kissed her wildly, feeling the aching throbbing in his loins. My God, he was thinking, she doesn’t know what she is saying…it’s only the storm…but I want her, I’ve got to have her…Does she understand what she is doing to me?

  Had he known that over his shoulder Ginny had caught a glimpse of Steve Morgan, standing talking to Paco in the shadow of one of the wagons across the circle from them, he would have been even more frustrated.

  As it was, half-demented by his own need and Ginny’s unexpected surrender, he half-le
d, half-carried her into the wagon that stood next to hers, piled with boxes and bits of Sonya Brandon’s furniture.

  Whatever he had let himself hope, Carl found himself disappointed in the end. Inside the darkened interior of the wagon, Ginny’s mood of barely suppressed abandonment and ardor seemed to vanish. She suffered him to lie next to her and to touch her breasts very lightly through the thin material of her gown at first, but pulled away from his arms almost immediately, protested in a choked voice that she was afraid, that she did not know what had gotten into her, that he must promise to behave….

  They stayed together only about ten minutes, during which time she babbled almost hysterically of how afraid the thunder made her—how exciting the prospect of a journey into Mexico seemed, and then, when he insisted upon knowing, admitted reluctantly that she would miss him very much.

  “But you’ll forget me, of course. By the time we return you’ll have found yourself another sweetheart…I know that men are like that.”

  And in spite of his protests, his insistence that he loved her and wanted more than anything else to make her his wife, she would not commit herself to anything beyond “we’ll wait and see; we both have to be very sure first, don’t we?”

  All in all, it had turned into a most frustrating evening, and by the time Carl had escorted Ginny back to the safety of her own wagon he was in a particularly bad mood.

  The storm broke during the night, and did nothing to mend the ragged tempers and frayed nerves of almost every member of the party.

  They seemed to turn upon each other, tempers flaring. Cookie complained that Zack did not yet know how to start a proper fire, and the boy overturned a pot of coffee and ran for his horse, declaring that he was a cowhand, and not a cook’s helper.

  Sonya and Ginny had words, starting when Ginny came back to the wagon at an hour that Sonya declared was ridiculously late, adding that if Ginny did not watch herself she would get the reputation of being cheap; whereupon Ginny retorted fiercely that she had been with Carl, and not Steve Morgan, following her statement by asking over sweetly whether poor Sonya was actually jealous of her.

  With compressed lips and backs carefully turned they spent the rest of the night in silence, although neither of them could sleep after the rain started to beat down on the canvas overhead.

  Hitching mules to the wagons the next morning, in a slashing downpour, with the ground already boottop-deep mud, was almost chaos. Some of the horses gathered into the roped-off remuda bolted, and Pop Wilkins blamed the wrangler, Dave Fierst, who promptly shouted back that he had a good mind to quit.

  Carl Hoskins rode up just then, his black slicker spattered with mud, and demanded wrathfully to know why in hell the wagons weren’t moving yet—the herd was restive and ready to stampede right through camp if they didn’t hurry it up.

  Pop had just opened his mouth to swear when Steve Morgan chose that same unfortunate moment to ride his big black into camp, looking like the devil himself, Pop was to say later, with his head bare and his black hair plastered to his skull.

  “Goddammit! You’re supposed to be holding those cattle. What the hell are you doing here?”

  His angry, almost contemptuous tone flicked the raw wound of Carl’s own injured vanity, and he lost his temper.

  When Ginny, alarmed by Sonya’s scream, clambered onto the high seat of their wagon, mindless of the rain that soon soaked her hair and gown, all she could see was two men, both completely covered with mud, slugging it out within a circle of shouting, almost obscenely excited onlookers.

  They were both of a similar build and height, and at first it was difficult to make out who was who, particularly since the thick mud was smeared on their faces as well. But it did not take Ginny long to recognize Steve Morgan—he fought with the raw, vicious fury of an animal. Carl, she knew, fancied himself as a fighter. He had once boasted to her that he had studied boxing, and even Cornish-style wrestling. But Ginny knew after she had watched for only a few moments, that none of his skill would help him.

  She could almost hear the sickening thud of fists against flesh, almost sense the hate that flared between them. They circled, came together, fell and rolled, fought free and struggled onto their feet again. She was reminded of gladiators in a Roman circus, of a fight to the death between two angry leopards.

  “Stop them!” Sonya moaned, her hands pressed against her mouth, “for God’s sake, why doesn’t somebody stop them?”

  “Because they’re all enjoying it, can’t you see that?”

  Ginny had meant to be extra nice to Sonya today, to apologize for her temper last night, but her voice came out sharp and high.

  She wanted to scream, but not with fear, as Sonya had done. Rather, with the surge of almost primitive excitement that had taken hold of her. Her pulses drummed, her heart beat so loudly and so fast she felt faint. She did not want to watch, but she could not help herself—it was like that day when she had watched Steve and the Apache fight—it was almost like the bullfight she had watched once, wondering then at all the women who leapt to their feet and screamed exultantly for blood. But today, today with the rain streaming down over her face, with the shouts of the men ringing in her ears and the thunder growling somewhere high overhead, she knew how they had felt. She was dimly aware of the heaving chests, the pounding blows, the primitive male encounter there in front of her; and acutely aware of her own body under the drenched, clinging gown she wore. It was as if a kind of insanity had seized her.

  There was a cry, a groan, and one of the men stumbled backwards, falling headlong into the mud.

  She heard Paco’s warning shout, “Steve! That’s enough!” And the man who had remained standing, half-crouched as if he was going to spring forward again, to finish it; hesitated, straightened, and walked away.

  It was over then. She threw herself from the wagon seat, ignoring Sonya’s frantic cry, and ran forward. Her instincts were driving her, it was to Steve Morgan she ran, oblivious of the rain and the mud and the staring faces that followed her stumbling progress. And then he turned around, and she saw the cold anger in his dark blue eyes, turning them almost black—the hateful twist of his mouth under the black mustache.

  “What do you want, Miss Brandon? Shouldn’t you run to your lover instead?”

  The words registered in her mind like a blow, stunning her. Without thinking she swung her hand outward and up, only realizing she had slapped him when she heard the crack of the blow and felt the tingling ache in her fingers.

  Somebody gasped—she saw an expression of shock and fury spring into his eyes and thought for a moment that he was going to strike her back.

  “You brute—you coward—that was for what you did to Carl—” She could barely force the words from between her stiff, cold lips, and she panted as if she had been running all morning.

  He stood there without a word, his lips taut with fury, and suddenly she could not bear to look at him, not to see the ugly red mark her hand had left on his face.

  Swinging on her heel, Ginny ran towards Carl and fell to her knees beside him. The rain tasted salty—it was some time before she realized that she was crying, the tears gushing from her eyes like the rain itself.

  17

  Captain Michel Remy, Comte d’Arlingen, had been waiting impatiently in the small Mexican village across the river from El Paso for the Brandon wagon train to arrive. Part of his impatience was due to the fact that he had been in this hell hole for two days already, and it was growing more and more dangerous for French soldiers to linger this close to the United States border. The Juaristas were everywhere these days—in spite of their lack of weapons and lack of organization they had proved themselves a stubborn bunch, striking in the most unexpected places. In fact, as Captain Remy gloomily contemplated his half-empty bottle of wine, he was thinking of the rumors he’d heard just before leaving Mexico City, that they would soon have to evacuate Chihuahua and drop back to Durango, leaving the Juaristas more or less in full possession of most
of the north.

  He frowned angrily. It was incredible! Here they were, the invincible armies of France, the Mexican Irregulars, troops from Austria and Belgium as well—and they still had not wrested a complete victory for Maximilian over the ragged forces of Juarez. As one of Marshal Bazaine’s aides, he had of course heard that the United States was in sympathy with Juarez, and since their civil strife had ended they were supplying arms and ammunition to Juarez, and turning a blind eye to the gunrunner who operated on both sides of the border. It was too bad! If only people in America and the rest of Europe and yes, even in Paris itself, realized what a wretchedly poor country this Mexico really was! The peasants were starving, their living conditions worse than those in Europe during the Middle Ages, and still they stubbornly rejected all the reforms and the help that poor Maximilian wanted to give them. The only civilized Mexicans were, of course, the gachupínes, who were proudly jealous of their European descent and took care that their bloodlines were not mixed with Indian or mestizo.

  Not legally, that is, Captain Remy thought wryly to himself, remembering a certain Carmen in Cuernevaca, with pale amber skin and marvelous tawny eyes. Very little Indian in that one! She boasted of the fact that her padre was one of the richest hacendados in the area.

  From Carmen, Michel’s thoughts wandered, in natural order, to Ginette. Ginny Brandon, whom he had always called Ginette, ever since the night he fell in love with her at the theatre, in Paris.

  He had known Pierre, of course, from childhood. And remembered Ginnie as a thin-faced girl, with extraordinarily large green eyes. Pierre’s petite cousine—he had not paid her any attention. Why should he? And then he had enlisted in Napoleon’s army, had come home on leave one winter, and seen Ginette. But my God, what a change! She had grown beautiful, ravissante! And when he had visited her box to renew his acquaintance with Pierre, what self-possession! It was he who had stumbled over his words like a green schoolboy. She had been charming, teasing, so sure of herself!