Wild Flower

by Cheryl Anne Porter

  * * *

  Her father lived on Vandeventer Place, west of Grand Avenue, in St. Louis. In a big house. That was all Taylor knew. That was all that her mother had scrawled on the piece of paper she’d tucked into Taylor’s saddlebags. Taylor hadn’t found the note until days later, when she’d been safely inside the United States in the state they called Missouri. Taylor had shaken her head at that. First the white man dishonored the Missouri people by taking their ancestral home from them. Then the white man named their state after them, to honor them. She would never understand the white man’s way of thinking.

  But she was here now, firmly among them in their city. She told herself she was undaunted to be in a city the size of St. Louis. After all, Tahlequah was sizable in its own right. And she’d made trips with her mother to cities outside the Nation. Adding to that was the schooling she’d undergone that had indoctrinated her into the ways and manners of the white man. She could pass for a white woman; she knew that. But still, her heart beat with some apprehension because the day’s light had long since faded, giving a sinister glare to the dark streets pocked by pools of light shed from the street lamps. Still, she was armed, and it was comforting. Her gun was strapped to her hip, and there was a hidden knife in its sheath inside her boot.

  Taylor sat easily atop her paint gelding on the sprawling city’s western outskirts and looked over the tangle of streets and buildings and wagons and carriages and people around her. As she passed by, lost and having to backtrack through the city’s business section, and searching for Vandeventer Place, she drew her share of curious stares. For the most part, she ignored them. But that didn’t mean they didn’t make her feel unwanted.

  Taylor reminded herself that she could simply leave. She hadn’t promised her mother she’d come to St. Louis. In fact, she’d told herself a month ago as she’d ridden away from Tahlequah that she had no intention of finding her white father or his family. Or Amanda. Why should she? She owed them nothing. And they owed her nothing. She needed no one. She could make her own way in the world.

  Besides, if it was true that Amanda was alive, then it was also true that she’d made no effort to contact Taylor in all these years. This realization hurt worse than her father abandoning her. Perhaps, though, Amanda had been told that Taylor was dead, just as she’d been told that Amanda was. That was the only explanation Taylor felt she could abide. Because she and Amanda, as children, had been inseparable, like sisters. Constantly together, sharing secrets, laughing, playing childhood games, sleeping in the same bed, promising always to be together, never to be apart. And then, the day had come, a day at the end of the War Between the States, when Amanda’s father, Stanley, brother to Taylor’s father, had returned for his wife and child.

  They had taken Amanda away, leaving Taylor heartbroken. She’d been nine years old then, but she remembered the day well. She recalled how Amanda’s mother, Camilla James, a daughter of stern Baptist missionaries, had cried and held Taylor for a long time, too. Camilla had then clung to Taylor’s mother, saying she would never forget her. And then … they were gone. As she’d grown, Taylor had convinced herself that they’d taken Amanda away because the white man Stanley James could not bear to see his wife and pretty pink child laughing with the dark-haired Cherokee child and her mother.

  There was a part of Taylor that wanted to believe the reason was that simple and that wrong. But at her age now, and with the things her mother had told her, Taylor was certain there was more to it than that. Not all white people hated red people. But most red people hated all white people. Taylor counted herself among that group. And yet, here she was … up to her ears in bustling white people in one of their big and confusing cities. She should just leave.

  That would be an easy enough thing to do … until her traitorous mind showed her the image of her mother crying and begging Taylor to be safe and to go to her father. And so, finally … with angry and unanswered questions driving her … she had turned Red Sky’s head toward the northeast and had become the obedient daughter. That thought got an immediate scoffing sound out of Taylor now. Obedient? No. Vengeful? Yes. A walking reminder of her white father’s sin—that was her, right down to her blue eyes, the same color as his. This her mother had told her many times … “You have your father’s eyes.” Taylor had never taken it as a compliment. She wanted nothing of her father’s. Nothing. She was here to honor her mother … and to confront her father. And Amanda.

  Only, now that Taylor was here, she had no idea how to go about honoring her mother’s wish, on the one hand. And nettling her father, on the other. She was supposed to put herself under Charles Edward James’s protection. Because there was one who wished her dead. Who? And why? Another white person, she supposed. Overall, though, and to her surprise, they were turning out to be not such a bad lot. Yes, they smelled funny. And they were loud and rude, always asking questions. But beyond that, they seemed harmless enough. And no one had bothered her thus far, or even in the past four weeks it had taken her to arrive here by horseback.

  And so she was beginning to have second thoughts about all this. What if her father had another family, a white wife and children? The odds were that he would, even though her mother hadn’t said. She might not know. But if he did, what would they think of Taylor? How would they treat her? More important, how should she treat them? Taylor’s worst fear was that she’d like them. And how would that be honoring her mother and nettling her father?

  Just then, Taylor realized where she was. Vandeventer Place. She reined her horse and looked around, laughing at herself. She’d been lost in thought and hadn’t noticed the city buildings and the noisy traffic fading away. As she sat there now on a corner and under a street lamp, she half-expected to be challenged, given her appearance, so out of place in this obviously high-society residential section, given the palatial appearance of the homes. But no passerby challenged her. Or seemed even to care that she was here—lucky for them.

  Taylor pulled her mother’s note out of her shirt pocket. Checking the house number written on it against the numbers posted above the ornate double doors across the street told her that she had found her destination. The home of her white father. Taylor tucked the note back into her pocket. Her heart thumped leadenly, but she refused to name the emotion behind its tom-tomming beat.

  Scowling, she stared at the house, a vast mansion across the street from her. Her father’s mansion. A home roughly the size of the Cherokee capitol building. She thought of the one-room rough log cabin she and her mother had shared. Fronting this house was a formal lawn with a profusion of flowers rife with the blooming colors of a rainbow. She thought of the tangle of wild forest that all but swallowed up her mother’s cabin. A black wrought-iron fence encircled this property. Back home, there was no need for such a fence. They had nothing worth stealing. The front gate here was open. An invitation? Or a dare?

  Taylor inhaled, realizing it was painful to do so with her chest suddenly so tight. Still, she told herself that she felt nothing, sitting there on that warm early-summer evening atop her paint horse and staring at … her new home?

  Maybe. She called this place uninviting at best to someone like her. Outside, many carriages were parked. Inside, through the open windows, she could see the house was ablaze with light and with richly garbed people walking about and talking and laughing. She also heard the faint strains of music. Obviously, this was a social gathering of some kind or a celebration of some sort. The people inside were wearing their finest clothes; of that she was certain.

  From under the hard brim of her felt hat, and seated atop her paint gelding, Taylor looked down at herself, seeing the man’s shirt she preferred over a woman’s blouse. Seeing her long thick braid, adorned with a feather, hanging over her shoulder. Tight buckskin britches. Knee-high leather boots. A gun strapped to her hip. She wasn’t dressed for a party. But neither did she care. This probably wasn’t the best time to confront him, her conscience pointed out. No, it wasn’t.

  A
grin of rebellion captured her lips. “Hello, Father,” she said almost in a whisper as she dismounted. “Your half-breed daughter is home. Did you miss me?”

  * * *

  Grey said his last good night, this one to Charles’s butler, Estes, who wished him a pleasant evening and closed the door behind him. Outside and donning his hat, fitting it low to his brow, Grey sauntered down the three wide steps and out of the circle of light cast by the lamps to either side of the doors. On the elegant and curving shrub-lined walk, which led to the opened gate and the carriages beyond, he caught sight of an approaching figure that had his steps slowing until he finally stopped. He squinted. What was that coming toward him? A creature in buckskin britches and armed with a holstered gun? Surely not.

  Grey rubbed his eyes. He’d drunk more than he thought. But the apparition kept coming … until it got so close that Grey knew this was no apparition. This was an earthbound blood-to-the-bone woman. One hell of a woman, actually, who had the confident stride of a man and the figure of an angel encased in those tight britches and under that man’s shirt. A woman also obviously intent, given her direction and despite her state of improper dress, on walking right up to the front door behind him and knocking on it. That should give poor old Estes a fainting fit.

  Perhaps she was lost or had simply mistaken this address for her destination. And perhaps it was none of his business. For a second, Grey considered allowing her to pass, then turning around and following her back to the front door—back to Charles’s party. Wouldn’t he and his guests be shocked? No doubt, there would be some wonderfully dramatic reactions to this handsome yet outlandish sight coming toward him, reactions he didn’t want to miss. But good sense finally won out. Drat it. If nothing else, Charles didn’t deserve another scene this evening. So, calling himself a good and dutiful friend, Grey took it upon himself to intercede when the woman drew abreast of him. “Excuse me. May I help you, miss?”

  She stopped and, in silence, looked him up and down as if he were of no consequence. That amused Grey, so he returned the insult by sizing her up in much the same way she did him. He couldn’t get a good look at her face because of the shadows thrown across her features by her hat’s brim, but he suspected she was young and not ugly. He also noted her long and dark thick braid—with a feather knotted to it by a strip of leather—that hung over her shoulder and how the top of her head was even with his chin. Tall for a woman, even an Indian woman, which he judged her to be, given the evidence of her attire.

  She hadn’t answered him, so Grey asked again, “May I help you, miss?”

  From under the brim of her hat she looked up at him and said, “I don’t require your help. Not unless you’re Mr. Charles Edward James. And somehow I don’t think you are. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  So she wasn’t lost or mistaken. Grey’s next thought was that her speech held an unusual but not unpleasant cadence, one unknown to his ear.

  She moved as if to step around him. There was really no reason why Grey should not have allowed her to do so. Except … sudden alarms of an unknown nature sounded in his head. He squared his shoulders to her and used his imposing size to block her way. The woman’s choices were either to deal with him or to hop over the knee-high hedges growing on either side of the walk and proceed on her way through the lawn—with him in implied pursuit.

  She evidently realized as much, because she stayed where she was and sent him a level stare. “My business is with Mr. James. Not you. Now, step aside.” He didn’t. Her chin came up a notch. “I won’t ask you again.”

  “I believe you,” Grey answered. But still, he continued to block her way. For the life of him, he couldn’t rid himself of a growing sense of dread, of something being so very wrong here, something that concerned others beyond her and Charles. So, until he knew better, Grey intended not to mind his own business. He decided to take another tack with her, one of concern for her. “Perhaps I can help you, miss. Is something wrong?”

  “Only with you. You’re blocking my way.” Her voice was low and rich … and clearly threatening.

  What was left of Grey’s good whiskey cheer soured. “Yes, I am. And again I ask you, what is your business with Mr. James?”

  Again she gave him that smooth and dismissing once-over of his person. “I have already answered that.”

  Rising temper made Grey’s ears feel hot. “Well, I’m afraid I’m asking again. Mr. James is entertaining this evening.” Grey gestured pointedly at her rustic outfit, complete with some type of carved-bone and beaded choker necklace. “And I would venture to say that you’re not an invited guest.”

  She didn’t say anything. Grey wondered if she was going to pull her gun and shoot him. But all she did was hook her thumbs in her gun belt and relax her pose, putting her weight on one leg. “You would be right on both counts, mister,” she drawled. “I am not invited. And I am not a guest. I am, however, his daughter.”

  Shock stiffened Grey’s knees but quickly turned to outrage. “The devil you say! How dare you show up here and say such a thing?” He leaned toward her, his voice no more than a hiss now. “I don’t know who you are or what your game is, but I do know you are not Mr. James’s daughter.”

  If he scared her, she didn’t show it. “And how would you know that?”

  “Because—” Stopping Grey was the sudden realization that he could not say the words that were on the tip of his tongue, not if he meant to keep his promise of silence on this issue to Charles. And he did mean to keep it. So he stepped back from her and finished in the most innocuous manner he could. “Because Charles doesn’t have a daughter. That’s how I know.”

  She nodded slowly … in a mocking way that left Grey feeling unsettled. But not as much as did her words that followed her nodding silence. “Is that what he told you, that he does not have a daughter?” she asked quietly. “Or did he tell you that he did, only she is now dead?”

  Shock again held Grey in its grip. How could she know that? It was exactly what Charles had told him—that his only child, a daughter, had died years ago. Grey fought to keep his expression from giving him away, but here was this young woman saying—

  “I should have known he would say something like that.” She spoke quietly, as if to herself. Then she exhaled, a sad or resigned sound, and looked up into Grey’s eyes. “I have not come this long way so I could stand here and justify myself to you. Now, if you will step aside, I will go greet my fath—”

  “You will not. You’re either completely insane or up to no good. Or both.” Grey grabbed her purposely by her right arm, rendering her incapable of easily reaching for that ugly-looking six-shooter strapped to her hip. He whipped her around to be facing the same direction he’d been heading. With her in tow but tugging hard against his brutal hold on her, he marched toward the open gate and the cluster of carriages and drivers on the street.

  “I see your game now. Somehow you’ve found out about his child,” he accused. No sense denying what she obviously already knew, that Charles had a daughter at one time. “And now you think you can extort money from him to keep his secret pain private. That’s it, isn’t it? Well, I don’t intend to allow you to do that. I do, however, intend to toss you out into the street where charlatans such as you belong. And make no mistake, young lady; these men out here—the carriage drivers—will make sure you stay out, if I tell them to see to it. And they will call the law, Miss … uh … Miss—”

  “James,” she said … with taunting conviction. “Taylor Christie James.”

  Grey stopped cold, still holding her slender arm but turning now to face the glaring young woman. Taylor. Of course if she knew Charles had a daughter, she’d know the girl’s name. But still, it was disconcerting to hear her say the very name he’d heard Charles cry out over and over that night long ago when drink had got the best of the man—a name Charles had later said he’d never told anyone else but him. Grey could barely breathe. This was quickly becoming a nightmare, one that had his heart pounding and his se
nses reeling. His grip on her tightened … she winced … as he leaned in toward her. “How do you know that name? Tell me. Or I’ll shake the truth out of you.”

  A defiant and ugly expression claimed her face. “I have already said. I know it because it is my name.”

  Outside the gate now and on the walkway, Grey stood with her in the light thrown by the street lamps. Aware of the glances of the curious drivers, he stared at this young woman whose arm he gripped so tightly. He looked for evidence in her face that would tell him she was crazy or lying … or even that she was telling the truth. Her eyes, a deep blue, he could now see, were unnervingly familiar. Then, he knew where he’d seen them before. If he wasn’t mistaken, they were the same distinct blue as Charles’s eyes.

  “Oh, God.” Grey rubbed his free hand over his forehead, inadvertently pushing his hat up on his brow. Feeling slightly sick for what all this might mean, but keeping his suspicions to himself, Grey did the only thing he could think to do to dislodge her from her story. He introduced himself. “Well, then, Miss … uh … James, allow me to introduce myself. I am Mr. Greyson Talbott, a close friend of … your father’s, one he’s taken completely into his confidence.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Not so completely. Not if he told you I’m dead. Do I feel dead to you?” When he didn’t say anything, she continued. “Take your hand off me unless you want me to give it back to you … separated from your arm.”

  Believing she’d do it, too, Grey released her and dropped his arm to his side. She turned abruptly away from him and again began making her way up the long walk to the festively lit house. Grey watched her, noting her swinging braid and swaying hips, her long, slim legs and her confident stride. Damned if her walk wasn’t a feminine version of her father’s—of Charles’s, he meant. No, he didn’t. He didn’t mean that at all. Grey rubbed agitatedly at his mouth and chin and wondered what, if any, his duty or his responsibility was here. Should he allow her to proceed or not? Did he have any right to stop her?