Wild Flower

by Cheryl Anne Porter

  In no more than a moment, she would approach the front doors. He had to decide. Grey told himself that his first responsibility was to Charles, a man who’d been his close friend for more than five years. And one who, through the impending marriage of Amanda to Franklin, would be a relative of sorts. Besides that, Grey told himself, he had no reason to doubt Charles’s story of his only child being dead. This made his decision easy. He had to stop this young woman again. He could not allow her to simply walk up to the unsuspecting man’s house and announce she was Taylor. At this point, it didn’t really matter whether she was or not. Because the shock alone of hearing her name spoken out loud would probably kill Charles.

  Speaking of killing … Grey suspected she’d probably kill him if he accosted her again. He was thinking of that six-shooter strapped low on her hip. She knew how to use it. No one had to tell him that. So there was only one safe way—safe for him—to stop her. It was also a test. He would call out to her … by name. Would she recognize it as hers and turn around?

  With only seconds to spare before she stood in front of the closed doors at the entrance to the James mansion, Grey started toward her and called out, “Miss James? Please, a moment more of your time? Miss James?”

  Chapter Four

  With her teeth gritted, and with the sounds of happy festivity inside the house assaulting her ears, Taylor pivoted around to face Mr. Talbott. Frustration ate at her. Only a few more feet, then up three wide steps, and she would finally be at her father’s front door. But the interfering white man apparently wasn’t going to allow it to happen. Instead, he seemed intent on forcing her to deal with him. “What do you want, Mr. Talbott?”

  The man approached her, stopping close enough to force her to look up at him. She figured that was his intent, to intimidate her. With the added light from the lamps mounted to either side of the double doors behind her, she could now see his face and surprised herself with the realization that under any other circumstances she would have found him extremely handsome … for a white man.

  “I want you to come away from this door right now,” he said levelly. “I want you to let Mr. James be.”

  Anger leaped to the forefront of Taylor’s already edgy emotions. She’d already given up her mother, her people, and her homeland. She’d come to terms with her betrayal by Monroe. And the ride here hadn’t been easy. She was tired and dirty and hungry and apprehensive about finally meeting her father. And now this very rude man seemed intent on stopping her. “I have already told you,” she began. “He is my father. And this is none of your business.” She made a show of inching her hand close to her gun. “If you do not leave me be, I intend to drop you where you stand.”

  The big man pointed to her gun as his eyes narrowed to slits. “Pulling that would be a mistake, miss.”

  “Maybe. But you will not be around to say you told me so.”

  The man’s expression hardened. “You’re pretty cocksure of yourself.”

  She’d gotten to him. Fighting a grin of triumph, Taylor shrugged. “No more so than you.”

  “Is that so? How do you figure?”

  “I am armed. And you are not.”

  “Am I not?” As if by magic, a gun appeared in his hand and he had it aimed at her heart.

  Taylor’s surprised intake of breath was a hiss. With widened eyes, she stared at the weapon. It was a small gun. But it was still a gun. Obviously he had some kind of holster up his sleeve. She had heard of such things. She met his eyes. The look in them said he was serious.

  “You’re going to come with me—now.”

  Taylor took an almost involuntary step back. She shook her head. “No, I will not do so.”

  “Oh, but this gun and I say you will.”

  Taylor exhaled slowly. She flexed her hand, wanting to go for her gun. “Why are you doing this?”

  Mr. Talbott made a vague gesture with his free hand. “I keep asking myself that same question. And I have to say that I don’t really know why. Except maybe because Mr. James is a good friend of mine. And I don’t want to see him hurt.”

  Taylor didn’t know exactly what to say to that, except, “I am his daughter.”

  He nodded. “You may well be. We’ll find out soon enough. But not tonight. This isn’t the right time … Miss James.”

  He kept calling her by her name, Taylor noticed. Because he believed her? Or because he had nothing else to call her? She glanced over her shoulder at the closed doors behind her. And then focused again on the gun pointing at her. Finally, she looked at Mr. Talbott’s face.

  “What to do,” he said, grinning. “Hard to figure, isn’t it? Can you draw your gun and shoot me before I shoot you? And if I wouldn’t really shoot a woman—which you don’t know if I would or not—can you get to the door before I stop you? Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”

  Taylor’s chin came up a notch. She didn’t like one bit how easy it was for him to read her. Most people had great difficulty in assessing her intentions. Of course, she comforted herself, she’d practically given them away in this instance.

  “I was right, wasn’t I?” he said. “As I said before, you are to come with me. Are you willing to do that? Because I really feel like a fool standing here with a gun trained on you.”

  Taylor saw no way out of this. Helping her to decide, though, was her own earlier ambivalence toward facing her father for the first time with all those other people present. It really hadn’t been something she was looking forward to doing, despite her bravado at being almost to his door. The closer she’d got to it, even before this man had confronted her, the less she’d been inclined to go through with an initial meeting tonight. So, finally, having thus convinced herself that this was her idea, she said, “I will go with you. As long as you do not—”

  “You will? You’ll go willingly?” Surprise flicked through his dark eyes.

  “Willingly? No. You have your gun aimed at me. But I will go. First I want to know where you are taking me.”

  With his tall hat pushed back on his head, Taylor could see twin vertical lines form between his eyebrows. “That’s a good question. I have no idea. I suppose to my town house several blocks away. That’s the only place I can keep an eye on you and make sure you don’t come back here tonight.”

  Relief coursed through her on one score. She’d feared he meant to take her to the law. But his intention, to take her to his home, still didn’t sit well with her. She’d be at his doubtful mercy, because she figured he’d take her gun from her. Of course, he didn’t know about the knife strapped in its sheath inside her boot. But that weapon wouldn’t do her much good if he intended to keep her under lock and key. And that was what scared her the most. She’d already lived all she ever wanted to in a prison of any kind. “You cannot lock me up in your home.”

  He sent her a look that challenged her statement. “Actually, I can. And no one would know the difference. But I’ll leave that up to you and your behavior.”

  With that, he waved his gun at her as a signal to precede him back down the walk and toward the carriages outside the open gate to her father’s home.

  * * *

  His knees apart, his arms crossed, Grey sat on the padded seat of his enclosed elegant carriage and stared at the enigmatic young woman seated across from him. Moonlight, as well as the street lamps they passed, intermittently flooded the carriage’s interior with their light and afforded him an intriguing picture of her.

  Miss James, or whoever the devil she was, sat with a rigid posture, her expression impassive. She’d tied her horse, an Indian paint pony, to the back of the brougham. The dull thud of the animal’s hooves on the hard-packed dirt of the street only added to the night sounds of the city, the soft noises of which followed them on their ride through St. Louis.

  Grey considered that paint horse now with his Indian blanket under the saddle. The evidence was mounting. Her buckskin britches. The unusual cadence of her speech. Her dark hair and high cheekbones. Her braided hair, the feather.
He’d bet she was extremely beautiful, all cleaned up. “Tell me, Miss James—and I only address you as such because I have no choice—are you, uhm, an Indian of some sort?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Of some sort?”

  Grey exhaled, knowing this was tricky ground. He removed his top hat and set it on the seat next to him … and atop her gun, which he’d taken from her as she got into the carriage. He rubbed a hand through his hair. “I didn’t mean my question to be an insult. I was only trying to ascertain if so and which tribe. You see, it’s not easy to tell with you. You’re dressed in a manner that suggests Indian blood, but you don’t look—at least not wholly—Indian.”

  She gave him that level stare of hers that he wouldn’t have ever admitted out loud unnerved him. “Why do you need to know?”

  He shrugged. “Call it curiosity.”

  “Curiosity,” she repeated, making of the word a mouthful of disdain. Grey didn’t believe she meant to add anything, but then she said, “Indian is your word. We call ourselves The People. My mother is of the tribe called Tsalagi.”

  “Cha-la-kee” was how it sounded to his ears. Grey nodded and smiled, as if this were wonderful news. “Cherokee,” he surmised. “I thought so.”

  She cocked her head at a questioning angle, the slight motion sending her long braid with its feathered adornment swinging slowly and sensually over the swell of her breast. Grey swallowed, meeting her eyes when she remarked, “You thought so?”

  “I did. The Cherokee are a beautiful people, and you are, er, certainly … beautiful,” he finished on a lame note. He felt like such a fool. But she was patently unfriendly, disconcertingly so. Well, what did he expect, he berated himself. He’d kept her from seeing to her own business and then had all but abducted her at the end of a gun and was even now taking her, against her will and essentially a prisoner, to his home … to do what with her there he had no idea. He scratched at his forehead. And had no idea how to proceed from here.

  Then … she smirked at him. It became a leering grin that revealed a set of white and even teeth. Grey frowned, feeling insulted somehow. “Are you laughing at me?”

  She shrugged. “You’re afraid of me, aren’t you, white man? You’re twice my size and have two guns to my none. And yet, you fear me—fear the savage and what I might do, don’t you?”

  “Hardly, Miss … James. But speaking of white men, tell me about those blue eyes of yours. They aren’t a Cherokee trait, are they?”

  She sobered, her expression returning to that impassive mask Grey was already beginning to hate. “No. They are instead the eyes of my white father.”

  He’d of course known that, if her father was who she said it was. “Then you’re a half-breed.” The word was out before he could stop it. Damned lingering effects of the whiskey. It had loosened his normal controls.

  Her eyes glittered. “Yes. I am as you say … a half-breed.”

  She said the word as if daring him to make something of it. Obviously, he’d insulted her. Grey thought to put her at ease. “Listen, the color of a person’s skin or whose blood may run in their veins is neither here nor there to me. I don’t judge anyone by it.”

  “How noble of you.” She crossed her arms. “However, I do. I do not like white people.”

  “You don’t?” Grey crossed his arms in imitation of her. “Interestingly enough, neither do I—like white people, I mean. For the most part, I think them a sorry lot. America’s sad history of westward expansion will bear me out on this, I believe.”

  That got her. Her eyes widened, and she slumped back against the seat. “But you are one of them.”

  He never looked away from her face. “Yes, I know. And I am occasionally not the least bit happy about it, either.”

  Her eyes narrowed and her chin came up a proud notch. “You are mocking me.”

  “I assure you I am not. I am merely seeking some common ground with you that will help get us through our present dilemma.”

  “I do not know that word.”

  “Which word? Dilemma? It means a problem. In this case, the one that currently has you in my carriage, bound for my home, and with your gun on the seat next to me.”

  Her gaze slid down to the weapon in question, or to the hat atop it. She shifted her attention back to him. “This … dil-emma, then, is of your own making. You could have left me alone to complete my business.”

  “I could have. But I don’t see it that way, Miss … James.” He still had trouble calling her that. Because to do so was to admit, however tacitly, that she was indeed Charles’s daughter. “Instead, I see your being here at all as the dilemma.”

  “For you? Or for my father?”

  “Good question. For us both, I suppose. For him because he believes that you—if you are indeed who you say you are—”

  “I am.”

  “Be that as it may. Still, he believes his daughter to be dead.”

  A frown creased her mouth, as if she was troubled. “Are you sure that is truly what he believes? Or did he just tell you that, wanting you to believe it?”

  Leaping to his friend’s defense had Grey sitting sharply forward. “Why in God’s name would he just tell me that? It’s certainly not the sort of thing one just divulges. And it’s not as if one night at dinner he said, ‘By the way, Talbott, I had a daughter once by a Cherokee woman, but now she’s dead. Please pass the peas.’” Grey sat back. “In truth, before he told me, I had no reason even to assume Charles had ever fathered a child.”

  Her brow furrowed, as if she was increasingly confused. “Then he has never taken a wife?”

  Ha. Now he had her. “You mean other than your mother, of course?”

  Her expression hardened. “He never married my mother. Not only did he make me a half-breed, but he also left me a bastard.”

  Grey was silent in the face of her harsh words. He tried to consider her revelations in light of what he knew of Charles. “I understand your anger, if this is all true. But tell me this—why would someone tell him you were dead? Because I believe, given the circumstances surrounding his telling me, that he firmly believes you are. Or his daughter is. Who would do that?”

  “That is among the things I came to find out.”

  “I see.” This was an awful mystery. A sudden coldness on this warm night crept over Grey’s skin. “Let me ask you something else. What’s kept you away all these years? Did you perhaps believe him to be dead?”

  “No. I believed him not to care. In one’s heart, it can be the same thing.”

  Heart-wrenching, her simple words were. Increasingly, Grey had no idea what he believed. There was tragedy, and perhaps no small amount of danger, inherent in this young woman’s appearance here in St. Louis; that much he knew. Suddenly he recalled the wedding that would soon unite his family with Charles’s. He thought of them all. Charles. Amanda and Franklin. Camilla and Stanley James, Amanda’s parents. Grey’s own widowed mother. Himself. Great Scott, two entire families. It then occurred to Grey that he hadn’t asked her the single most important question. “Why are you here just now?”

  “Because you held a gun on me and—”

  “Not that. I mean why are you here in St. Louis now, at this particular time? I am going to assume for a moment that you are Charles James’s long-lost child. That being so, what has happened to cause you to come here now, if you’ve known all along that your father was alive? And why is it suddenly important that you discover who told your father that his daughter was lost to him? Obviously, behind that unknown ‘who’ is a why. There has to be a why. Why someone would do such a terrible thing.”

  She studied him in that placid yet intense manner that was already familiar to him. She seemed to be weighing whether or not he was worthy of being given an answer. “Why I am here now is my business, as is the rest of it.”

  So they were back to that. Grey took another tack. “Do you intend to harm Mr. James?”

  She shook her head. “No. But why do you care so much? Why are you making this
your business?”

  Grey had no intention at this point of making his family vulnerable by admitting to the upcoming wedding between Amanda—this young woman’s cousin, if she was telling the truth—and his brother, Franklin. Not to mention the attendant scandal that could arise because of her revelations. And scandal was the last thing Franklin needed right now, as he was preparing to run for mayor. In light of all that, Grey kept his answer simple. “Because Charles is my friend, as I’ve already said.”

  “You are a very loyal man.” She made it sound as if he were a very stupid man. Then, she crossed her arms and had a question for him. “How did you finally learn that your … friend had fathered a child?”

  Grey sat up in a rigid posture. “Quite by mistake, I assure you. And I refuse to go further into the incident with you.”

  “Then you know how I feel, Mr. Talbott.”

  Grey ducked his chin. “Point taken. You keep your secrets. And I’ll keep mine. But beyond that, may I suggest that you look at this on another level?” She shrugged her evident willingness to listen. “Thank you. You now know that Mr. James believes you—or his daughter—to be dead. If you are she, then obviously you’re not. So even if you are his daughter, and even if your reason for being here is purely innocent, and your reunion would cause only great joy, we cannot simply spring you on him. The shock of just suddenly being faced with the reality that you’re alive would kill a stronger man than he is.”

  She’d been nodding and listening closely as he spoke, but by the time he finished, something had flickered in her eyes, edging them with a strong emotion. “Then he is … unwell?”

  That was a gratifying response. She at least seemed to care about Charles’s health. “No. He’s not unwell. But he is—how can I put this? Fragile, I suppose, is the best word. Do you know that word?” She nodded. Grey continued. “To me, Charles appears to have been deeply hurt by life. I fear it wouldn’t take much to … end him.”

  She exhaled, somehow imbuing the sound with a considered thoughtfulness, as if breathing helped her draw not only air but also conclusions. “So because of this … fragile state, you think to protect him. From only me? Or from all of life’s harsh truths?”