Wild Flower

by Cheryl Anne Porter

  With inherent grace and a surprising shyness, Taylor cast her gaze downward. “I am as I was made. I had nothing to do with my appearance.”

  Given that answer, Greyson realized he was on delicate ground here. Their cultures were so dissimilar. What if they were now married, according to her beliefs? Surprising him was the realization that such a notion did not alarm him. It pleased him. How earth-shattering. And wonderful. Apparently, his bachelor days were numbered, if not over. And how odd was that? Only two nights ago, in his brougham, he’d proposed, as a cover only, that she pose as his affianced. But now it appeared that their being a couple might very well be real.

  Well, then, that made his answer simple, didn’t it?

  Suddenly giddy with good cheer that he suspected could even include the boring Franklin and their imperial mother—in small doses—Grey smiled down into Taylor’s face and kissed the tip of her nose. Such an endearment seemed to startle her. He grinned, liking that he could catch her off-guard but wishing that just once he could win a smile from her. He didn’t believe he’d seen one yet. “What does it mean, you asked me a moment ago. Well, I suppose in the simplest of terms, Taylor, what transpired here, in this bed last night, means that we are, at the very least, betrothed. Do you know that word?”

  Still unsmiling, Taylor stared at him. “Yes, I do.” She untangled her limbs from his and pushed away, her hands flattened against his bare chest, which she used for leverage. Then, sitting naked and proud, her legs tucked under her, she assured him, “You are a silly fool, white man. It means no such thing. You place too much meaning on this.” A dismissive sweep of her hand indicated his bed … and everything they’d done in it, evidently.

  Stung, embarrassed, and always before now the one to disavow amorous and clinging women of their matrimonial notions, Grey pushed himself up and sat facing her. “And perhaps you, my heathen princess, don’t place enough meaning on the intimacies we shared.”

  Her face reddened with a scowl. She poked his chest with a finger. “I am not a heathen, you round-eyes. I know all about your God and your Bible—enough to know that you think what we did last night with each other is a sin. Not to me. Lovemaking is not a bad thing. It is good. It is a sharing. But I give it only the meaning it deserves. You wanted me. And I wanted you.” She looked him up and down in that haughty dismissive way of hers that was a clear insult. “Although right now I cannot remember why.”

  Grey was totally outraged. He’d never felt so cheap before in his life. Or used. That’s what he’d been. Used. “In my culture, missy, this night we spent together would mean we were most definitely headed for an altar and a priest. But maybe it’s nothing in the Cherokee Nation for a woman to give herself to any man she chooses any time she wants. I don’t know how it is there—”

  “No, you do not.” Her voice was dangerously level and calm. “Cherokee women are virtuous. It is prized among my people, just as it is among yours. Do not judge them by me. But in my culture, the men are also held to that same behavior. Can your people say that? I do not think so. Because I was not the only person in this bed who knew what to do. And yet, you are unmarried.”

  Well, that certainly shut him up. Grey had no idea how to come back to that. Nor did she give him a chance to do so.

  “Is this how you treat the women in your country? She gives herself and her most prized gift to you—and you insult her because she does? To a Cherokee man, it is the greatest honor in his life to have a woman willingly lie down with him. It is all she needs to do for him to know he has won her heart. She needs no words. Cherokee men know only the most deserving of men among them can earn a woman’s love. You would throw this gift away, Greyson Talbott? You would tell me it means nothing to you? That I am vile and a heathen because I—” She stopped abruptly, her eyes wide and darting, her expression a mask of startled realization.

  “Because you what, Taylor? Because you showed me how much you care about me?” Grey asked softly, wanting to reach out to her and stroke her cheek. He wanted also to take her in his arms and hold her, and comfort her. He wondered if any man in her life had ever comforted her. Certainly she’d been held and loved. But had she ever found solace in any man’s arms?

  Grey was no longer angry with her. Far from it. And neither was she with him. He knew that because tears escaped her eyes and she stared at him with the face of a hurting child. About halfway through her tirade, Grey had realized that she hadn’t been talking to him or about him. He suspected her anger was directed at whoever had taught her the sensual delights she’d tantalized him with last night. “I’m sorry, Taylor,” Grey finally said into the growing silence between them. “You are right. You gave me a beautiful gift that needs no words. And I didn’t cherish your love as I should. Can you forgive me?”

  Taylor wiped away her tears. A look of wonderment came over her face, a look that strongly affected Grey. As he watched, not daring to move, Taylor tilted her head at a questioning angle. She reached a hand out and did as he’d wanted only moments ago to do to her. She stroked his cheek and then his forehead. She slowly ran the tip of her finger down the bridge of his nose … and then over his lips. They tingled with her touch, but Grey didn’t dare move. The moment was magic.

  Taylor finally looked again into his eyes. “You would ask me for forgiveness? No one has ever … Why?”

  As he’d suspected. Taylor had been used and run over. His heart went out to her, this unsmiling young woman who walked the earth alone, this young woman he could no more hope to hold onto than he could hope to rope the wind. His heart ached … but for himself. “I ask your forgiveness because I hurt you with my unthinking words,” he said as softly as he could.

  “And my words … they hurt you, did they not?”

  Grey dared a smile. “Is that an apology from my heathen princess?”

  She pulled back, blinking as if his question had pulled her out from under a spell. Her darting gaze traveled over him and his nakedness. She then looked down at herself. And up at him again. Back was the haughty, independent lone wolf of a woman who’d spun him on his heels two nights ago in front of her father’s home. She arched a raven’s wing of an eyebrow and said, “I never apologize.”

  And then she snaked a hand out, taking him by the back of his neck and pulling him to her. Kneeling in the bed with him, and just before his lips crushed hers, she put her fingers to his mouth and whispered, “Make love to me. And I will be your woman.”

  A thrill shot through Grey, hardening him in an instant. Taylor was absolutely magnificent, the veritable embodiment of Woman. A paragon of all the sensual arts of love. In a fever to possess her, Grey grabbed her up in his arms. Her legs locked around his waist, her arms around his neck. Grey cupped her firm buttocks, pressing her full against him. His mouth covered hers and hungrily sought to plunder its sweet depths. Taylor’s moans and mewling and insistent raking of her nails over his back drove Grey absolutely wild. She wanted him inside her.

  Grey fell forward onto the bed with Taylor beneath him. With one hand he braced their fall onto the yielding mattress. She accepted his weight with an upward thrust of her hips. Grey moaned into her mouth. She held his tongue with her teeth. Her hands never stopped their stroking quest as she scratched and kneaded the muscled flesh on his back and urged him on. Grey had never known such wild and sensual abandon. Never would he give her up. Never. In all his life, he—

  With no warning, the door to the hall opened suddenly. Masculine footfalls advanced into the room, dimmed by the heavy draperies, and approached the bed … where the startled lovers were frozen in position atop it.

  “Grey, old man? Good morning. Are you in here? It’s so blamed dark, I can barely see. It’s me—Franklin. Bentley said he believed he’d heard you moving around up here—”

  A shocked gasp, sounding very close to the four-poster bed, preceded the steady beat of a hasty retreat toward the open door. “Great Scott! Good God, I am sorry. I had no idea—”

  The door slammed clos
ed behind Franklin Talbott.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Franklin, what in God’s name are you doing here so early? Yesterday it was Mother. And today it’s you. Tomorrow I will have run out of relatives and I suppose I should expect a parade of acquaintances to string through my home beginning at the crack of dawn.” Grey, clad now in his trousers and a shirt he was tucking into his waistband, stood barefoot in his parlor and berated his brother. He’d left an unabashed Taylor upstairs attending to her bath and toilette.

  “Early, you say? It’s after luncheon. You’ve been abed all morning. And how was I to know you were, er, entertaining a, uhm, young lady?”

  “It’s not what you’re thinking.”

  Franklin was grinning. “Oh, I think it was exactly what I’m thinking.”

  “Wipe that silly smirk off your face or I’ll thrash you.”

  “No, you won’t. We aren’t children anymore, Grey. You can’t go around bashing me now.”

  Grey stepped up. “You don’t think so?”

  Franklin stepped back. “Calm down, Greyson. You’re a bachelor and how you choose to behave in the privacy of your own home—”

  “Should not be interrupted by my younger brother or anyone else.”

  “I quite agree. And I do apologize. Perhaps you should take a stronger hand with your staff. It was Bentley who told me to go on up. But at any rate, I’m sorry if I’ve inconvenienced you or your … er, the young lady. But I have serious business to discuss with you. So the sooner you pay your little—ack!”

  With one hand, Grey had him by the throat. “Don’t you even finish that thought. The lady is the woman I intend to marry.”

  Franklin’s eyes bulged and his face turned an interesting shade of purple … right before he smashed a fist into Grey’s midsection and doubled him over in agony. His hands gripping his knees, Grey tried desperately to breathe and not be sick.

  The apparently undamaged Franklin good-naturedly supported his brother with a hand to Grey’s arm as he patted him on the back and gave him a hearty, “Well, I certainly hope so, especially after that, er, performance I witnessed. But congratulations, old man. Won’t Mother be shocked? As well as all of St. Louis. There now, that’s the fellow. Breathe. In and out. You remember how. Now, tell me, who’s the lucky young lady?”

  Grey finally recovered enough to be able to straighten up some and glare with renewed respect at his brother, two years his junior. While Grey was tall, dark, and muscular like their father, Franklin more resembled their mother. He had her brown hair and eyes. He was about average height for a man and slightly built … thank God. With one hand clutching at his stomach, Grey rested his other heavily on Franklin’s shoulder and concentrated again on breathing. For his part, Franklin crossed his arms over his chest and smiled back at Grey … as if nothing at all had just occurred.

  Finally able to speak, Grey rasped out, “The lucky young lady is Miss James, you son of a bitch.”

  Franklin’s stance stiffened. “The hell you say. My affianced is Miss James, and well you know it.” Then his eyes widened appreciably. A dangerous red suffused his cheeks. He knocked Grey’s hand off his shoulder and pointed in the direction of the stairs outside the room. “Do you mean to tell me that the woman upstairs in your bed is my—”

  “Shut up your bellowing, you idiot,” Grey hissed as he made his way over to the medallion-back sofa and sat heavily, bending himself double over his knees to ease his pain. Franklin followed him, sat next to him. Grey edged up to a sitting position and shot his brother a hard look. “Do you want her to hear you? Of course it’s not Amanda. How could you even think it of me or of her? The Miss James I mean is her cousin. Taylor.”

  The words were out before Grey could even think. Damn. He hadn’t meant to say that. But the words had already worked their magic.

  A very pale Franklin clutched at Grey’s arm. “Then it’s true.”

  “What is?” came Grey’s wary question as he shrugged away his brother’s hand.

  Franklin essentially ignored him, carrying on his discourse as if he were alone and were speaking aloud to himself. “But it’s just not possible. I have labored under the belief that this Taylor girl was hanged, for God’s sake. Certainly she’s the same one Amanda and her mother were crying over last night.” Only now did Franklin include his brother in the conversation. “And there you were—and Mother was—knowing the girl lived. And not one word to relieve the Jameses of their sorrow.”

  “‘And Mother was’?” Grey had immediately picked up on that. He didn’t know how to feel about her having told someone what she suspected. What was her game? She always had one.

  “Yes. Mother was,” Franklin assured him. “Last night she knew that girl was alive and said nothing. How long have you known?”

  “That she was alive? Less than two days. But about her existence at all? Five years. Charles told me about her.”

  “Charles told you? I myself had never even heard of her until last night.”

  Grey found that odd. “Good God, Franklin, you’re going to be family. You mean the Jameses, not even Amanda, your fiancée, have never mentioned Taylor to you?”

  A very hangdog expression claimed Franklin’s features. “No. But I suppose if they believed the girl long dead and buried, why would they?”

  That made sense. “Well, how much do you know now about her?”

  Franklin became increasingly despondent. “Everything. Between Amanda and Mother, I believe I know everything that can be known. Meaning there’s still a lot of mystery surrounding her. I fear it surrounds my dear Amanda’s entire family, too.”

  Grey nodded, knowing the truth of that all too well. But he also wondered what everything meant. Was there more he didn’t know himself? After all, his only sources were Taylor and her father. Frustration ate at Grey and had him rubbing his brow distractedly. He hated this being suspicious of everyone. Adding to Grey’s frustration was his belief that with every name added to the list of those who knew Taylor’s true identity, she was somehow made more vulnerable. “All right, then, so Mother told you Taylor is here,” he said abruptly into the quiet that had grown between him and Franklin. “When?”

  “This morning.”

  Relief coursed through Grey. “Then she didn’t tell everyone last night after I left? When you were all together, I mean?”

  “No. This morning.”

  “Did she say if she’s told anyone else?”

  “No. Yes. I mean she said she’s told only me.”

  “Did you just come from Mother’s?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  Grey shrugged. “Just curious. I was wondering if she’s had time to gad about town shocking the Jameses with this news.”

  “Oh, surely she wouldn’t.”

  Grey eyed his brother. “You’ve always been most naive where our mother is concerned.”

  “And you’ve always been most suspicious.”

  “Have I? And which one of us has had his opinion borne out most frequently?” Franklin made a face. “As I thought,” Grey said. “Now, Franklin, have you told anyone?”

  “No. I said I’d just come here.” Franklin answered directly enough, but he was stroking his clean-shaven chin and looking everywhere except at Grey. “This is all most upsetting. You see,” he began abruptly, “this morning I didn’t believe Mother when she told me she’d seen her here only yesterday.”

  Grey didn’t like one whit how Franklin said her but said nothing, just listened to what else Franklin had to say.

  “So instantly, Grey, I came here in a rush to tell you I feared Mother was addled—”

  “Mother is anything but addled, Franklin.”

  Franklin frowned. “I realize that now. Grey, I think you’d better explain what is going on here. This young lady … how do we know she is who she says she is? Does she have any proof? I mean, she says she’s this Indian cousin of the very prominent James family. A cousin who Amanda says died in childhood. Then we find out she didn’t die then
but was recently hanged for murder. Only she wasn’t really. What is she—a cat with nine lives? Good Lord, is it any wonder I’m so confused?”

  “No. It is a very confusing situation, I admit. I’ve barely come to terms with it all myself.”

  Franklin looked askance at Grey. “Oh, I’d say you’ve come to quite good terms with it, if what I had the misfortune to witness upstairs is any indication. I am assuming that now you’ve enjoyed the honeymoon, you believe you’ll have the wedding?”

  Grey narrowed his eyes; his voice was no more than a growl. “It’s not like you think. And I won’t warn you again to leave off discussing her in such terms.”

  “How can I not?” Franklin jumped up, agitatedly pacing the neat and elegant room. Suddenly, to Grey, he seemed older and smarter, as if until now he’d been hiding another side of himself. “Grey, will you only think? Mother says this Taylor is a half-breed and that Charles was never married to her mother. I don’t see how this could be worse. While I would hope I don’t harbor any prejudices, my opponents will latch onto this very sensational information and will drag me through the mud with it. As well as Amanda, her parents, Charles, and his daughter. Even you. We’ll all be tainted by her existence, if not her very heritage. Damn. We’ll all be ruined.”

  “No. You and Mother will be, you mean.” Something inside Grey hardened. He’d miscalculated the reason behind his brother’s concerns regarding Taylor. It had nothing to do with people close to Franklin himself who could be hurt or killed. It had to do with political aspirations. How charming. “I personally don’t give a damn what your social or your political set thinks.”

  A sudden ugly gleam shone in Franklin’s eyes. “Give a damn? You? Of course you don’t. What exactly would you have to give a damn about? You’re a kept man, and I’m the one having to keep you. Everything is in your name as the eldest, but I’m the one who does all the work. You sign documents and carry on with your clubs and your women. You’ve never cared one fig for the proprieties. You’re already ruined. No decent woman would have you. Yet you delight in calling me boring and taunting me. Could it be that you’re jealous of me, Grey? That you resent me for being the responsible one, the one who has always had to take care of the family businesses? Could it be that you know you’ll never amount to anything and you hate me because I will? Do you look at me and see your failures?”