The Savage Heart

by Diana Palmer

  He let out his breath and smiled with relief. "I imagine that Mrs. Mulhaney could find a room for you, yes. But the idea of a young single woman living in a boardinghouse in going to make you look like a loose woman in the eyes of the community. If anyone asks, you're my cousin."

  "I am?"

  "You are," he said firmly. "It's the only way I can protect you."

  "I don't need protecting, thank you. I'm quite capable of looking after myself."

  Considering that she'd handled her father's funeral alone and gotten here, halfway across the country, without mishap, that was apparent.

  "I believe you," he said. "But you're a stranger here and totally unfamiliar with life in a big city. I'm not."

  "Aren't we both strangers here, really?" she asked, and there was a deep sadness in her tone. "Neither of us has anybody now."

  "I have cousins, inSouth Dakotaand inMontana," he replied.

  "Whom you never visit," she shot back. "Are you ashamed of them, Matt?"

  His eyes glittered like black diamonds. "Don't presume to invade my privacy," he said through his teeth. "I'll gladly do what I can to see you settled here. But my feelings are my own business."

  She grinned at him. "You still strike like a rattler when you're poked."

  "Be careful that you don't get bitten."

  She dropped him a curtsey. "I'll do my best not to provoke you too much."

  * * *

  "What are you planning to do here?" Matt asked. He'd arranged with the station agent to have her bags stored until he could settle Tess and send for them.

  "I'm going to get a job."

  He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at her. "A job?"

  "Certainly, a job. You know I'm not rich, Matt, and besides, it's 1903. Women are getting into all sorts of professions. I've read about it. Women are working as shop girls and stenographers and in sewing plants. I can turn my hand to most anything if I'm shown how. And I'm quite an experienced nurse. Until Papa died"—her voice broke and she took a few seconds to compose herself—"I was his nurse. I can get work nursing in a hospital here. I know I can." She abruptly looked up at him. "There is a hospital here, isn't there?"

  "Yes." He remembered making a keen shot of her with both bow and rifle. She was a quick study, and utterly fearless. Had he started her down the road to nonconformity? If he had, he knew in his bones that he was about to regret it. Nursing was not considered by many as suitable for a genteel woman. Some would raise eyebrows. Of course, it would raise eyebrows, too, if she worked in a shop, or—

  "The very notion of a woman working is—well, unconventional."

  Her brows rose. "What would you call a Sioux Indian in a bowler hat pretending to be exiled Russian royalty—traditional?"

  He made an irritated sound.

  "You shouldn't debate me," she muttered. "I was first in my class in my last year in school."

  He glared at her as they started to walk again down the broad sidewalk. Exquisite carriages drawn by horses in decorated livery rolled along the wide Street, whose storefronts were decorated for the holiday season.

  Tess caught sight of a store window where little electric trains ran against a backdrop of mountain scenery that had actual tunnels running through. "Oh, Matt, look. Isn't it darling?"

  "Do you really want me to tell you how I feel about iron horses?"

  "Never mind, spoilsport." She fell into step beside him once more. "Christmas isn't so very far away. Does your landlady decorate and put up a tree in the parlor?"

  "Yes."

  "How lovely! I can crochet snowflakes to go on it."

  "You're assuming that she can find room for you."

  She gnawed at her lower lip. She'd come here on impulse, and now for the first time, she was uncertain. She stopped walking and looked up. "What if she can't?" she asked.

  Even through the veil, Matt could see plainly the expression of fear on Tess's face. He was touched in a dozen ways, none wanted. "She will," he said firmly. "I won't have you very far from me. There are wicked elements in this city. Until you find your feet, you need a safe harbor."

  She smiled. "I'm a lot of trouble, I guess. I've always been impulsive. Am I trading too much on our shared past, Matt? If I'm in your way, just tell me, and I'll go back home."

  "Home to the persistent lieutenant? Over my dead body. Come on."

  He took her arm and guided her around a hole in the boardwalk that looked as if a rifle had made it. Matt recalled reading about a fight between a city policeman and a bank robber recently. The bank was close by.

  "Mrs. Blake told me thatChicagois very civilized," Tess said. "Is it?"

  "Occasionally."

  She looked over at him. "Now that you have your own detective business, what sort of cases do you take?"

  "Mostly I track down criminals," he replied. "Once or twice I've done other sorts of work; I've taken on a couple of divorce cases, getting evidence to prove cruelty on the part of the men." He glanced at her. "I suppose you have no qualms about divorce, being modern."

  "I have a few," she confessed. "I think people should try to make a marriage work. But if a man is abusive or cheats or gambles, I think a woman is more than entitled to be rid of him."

  "I think she's entitled to shoot him," he murmured, remembering vividly a recent case, where a drunken husband had left vicious bruises on a small child and her mother. Matt had knocked the man down and taken him to the police himself.

  "Good for you!" Tess peered up at him through her veil. "You're still wickedly handsome."

  He gave her a mocking smile. "You're my cousin," he reminded her. "We're relatives inChicago. You can't leer at me, regardless of how modern you feel."

  She made a face at him. "You've become absolutely staid!"

  "I work in a staid profession."

  "I'll bet you're good at it, too." She eyed his waistcoat. "Do you still carry that enormous bowie knife around with you?"

  "Who told you about that?"

  "It was in a dime novel I read about you."

  "What?"

  She bumped into him because he stopped so abruptly. "Don't do that!" She straightened her hat. "There was a dime novel about you, didn't you know? It came out close to a year ago, just after that case where you caught the ringleader of some bank robbery gang and shot him. They called you Magnificent Matt Davis!"

  "I'm going to be sick," he said, and looked as if he meant it.

  "Now, now, it can't be so bad to be a hero. Just think, one day you can show a copy of that novel to your children and be a hero to them, too."

  "I won't have children," he said shortly, staring straight ahead.

  "Why not?" she asked. "Don't you like them?"

  He looked down at her evenly. "Probably as much as you do. Isn't twenty-six about the right age to be called a spinster?"

  She flushed. "I don't have to get married to have a child," she informed him haughtily. "Or a lover!"

  He gave her a speaking look.

  Odd, she thought, how that look made her feel. She swallowed hard. It sounded good at suffragist meetings to say such things, but when she looked at Matt, she thought of how it would be to have him as a lover, and her knees went wobbly. She actually knew very little about such things, except that one of her suffragist friends had said thatithurt a lot and it wasn't fun at all.

  "Your father would beat you with a buggy whip if he heard you talk like that!"

  "Well, who else can I say such things to?" she demanded, glaring at him. "I don't know any other men!"

  "Not even the persistent soldier?" he asked venomously.

  She shifted. "He never bathes. And there were crumbs in his mustache."

  He burst out laughing.

  "Never mind," she grumbled, and started walking again. "I'll just keep my scandalous thoughts to myself until I can find a group of suffragists to join." She looked at him from the corner of her eyes. "Do you know where they meet?"

  "I never attend suffragist meetings myself; I'm much
too busy with my knitting."

  She punched his arm playfully.

  "I'm sure you'll find them," he said quickly.

  "I expect they have a low tolerance for liquor, as well," she mused aloud. "Do you have a hatchet?"

  "Only Indians carry hatchets," he informed her. "I'm a detective. I carry a .32 caliber Smith and Wesson double action revolver."

  "You never taught me to shoot a pistol."

  "And I never will," he said. He gave her a wry glance. "One day, the temptation might be too much for you. It wouldn't look good on my record if you shot me. We're here."

  Matt took her elbow and guided her up the steps of a brownstone house with long windows and a huge door with a lion's head knocker. He escorted her inside, then paused outside a closed door and knocked.

  "Just a minute," a musical voice called. "I'm coming."

  The door opened and a tiny woman with gray-streaked blond hair in a bun looked way up at Matt and then at his companion.

  "Why, Mr. Davis, have you found a wife at last?"

  Tess flushed scarlet and Matt cleared his throat.

  "This is my cousin, Tess Meredith, Mrs. Mulhaney. Her father has died, and she has no relatives except me. Is that room on the third floor still vacant?"

  "Yes, it is, and I'd be delighted to rent it to Miss Meredith." She smiled at Tess, a thousand unspoken questions in her blue eyes.

  Tess smiled back. "I'd be very grateful to have a place to stay near Matt." She looked up at him with sickening adoration. "Isn't he just the sweetest man?"

  "Sweet" wasn't an appellation that had ever connected itself with the enigmatic Mr. Davis in Mrs.Mulhaney's mind, but she supposed to a kinswoman he might be.

  "He is a kindhearted soul," she agreed. "Now, Miss Meredith, you can have meals with us. Mr. Davis will tell you the times, and there's a laundry just three doors down run by Mr. Lo."

  Matt stifled a chuckle. "I'll show her where it is," he promised.

  "Let me get the key and I'll take you to your room, Miss Meredith. It has a very nice view of the city."

  She went off, mumbling to herself, and Tess lifted both brows as she looked up at Matt. "And what was so amusing about the laundry?"

  "Don't you remember? Whites used to call us Mr. Lo."

  She frowned.

  He made an exasperated sound. "Lo, the poor Indian…?"

  She laughed. "Oh, good heavens. I'd forgotten our jokes about that."

  "I haven't," he murmured. "You and I joked. Everywhere else being called Mr. Lo or 'John' most of my life was not funny."

  "Well, you're anything but apoor Indian now," she said pointedly, her gaze going over his rich paisley vest in shades of magenta and the dark gray suit and white shirt he was wearing with it. Even his shoes were expensive, handmade. For feet that size, she thought wickedly, they'd have to be handmade! She searched his dark eyes with a smile in her own. "You look filthy rich to me!" she whispered.

  "Tess!"

  "I'll reform," she promised, but hadn't time to say more because Mrs. Mulhaney was back with the key.

  «^»

  Chicagowas big and brash, and Tess loved to explore it, finding old churches and forts and every manner of modern building. Lake Michigan, lapping at the very edge of the city and looking as big as an ocean, fascinated Tess, who had spent so many of her formative years landlocked in the West.

  She rather easily got a nursing position at the hospital inCookCounty. Her experience and skill were evident to a number of the physicians, who maneuvered to get her on their services. Since she wasn't formally trained, however, she was classified a practical nurse.

  The matrons who lived at the boardinghouse were less approving. They considered nursing a dreadful profession for a well-brought-up single woman and said so.

  Tess took their comments with smiling fortitude, mentally consigning them to the nether reaches. They couldn't really be blamed, though, considering their upbringing. Change came hard to the elderly.

  Fortunately, she discovered a group of women's rights advocates and joined immediately. She eagerly worked on every plan for a march or a rally aimed at getting the vote for women.

  Matt kept a close eye on her. He often saw her as an unbroken filly that no hand was going to tame. He wouldn't have presumed to try. There was much to admire in Tess, and much to respect.

  * * *

  Tess made a good friend right away in Nan Collier, the young wife of a telegraph clerk, who attended suffragist meetings with her. Matt had insisted that she not go out at night unaccompanied. It was the only restriction he'd placed on her, and since she didn't consider it demeaning, she abided by it. AndNanwas good company, too. She wasn't an educated woman, as Tess was, but she was intelligent and had a kind heart.

  Asthey grew closer, it became obvious to Tess thatNanhad problems at home. She never spoke of them, but she made little comments about having to be back at a certain time so that her husband wouldn't be angry, or about having to be sure that her housework was done properly to keep him happy. It sounded as if any lapse in what her husband considered her most important duties would result in punishment.

  It wasn't until the end of her first month inChicagothat Tess discovered whatNan's punishment was. She came to a suffragist meeting at a local matron's house with a split lip and a black eye.

  "Nan, what happened?" Tess exclaimed, her concern echoed by half a dozen fierce campaigners for women's rights. "Did your husband strike you?"

  "Oh no!"Nansaid quickly. "Why, this is nothing. I fell down the steps, is all." She laughed nervously, putting a self-conscious hand to her eye. "I'm so clumsy sometimes."

  "Are you sure that's allitis?" Tess persisted.

  "Yes, I'm sure. But you're sweet to worry about me, Tess,"Nansaid with genuine affection.

  "Don't ever let him start hitting you," Tess cautioned. "It will only get worse. No man has the right to beat his wife, regardless of what she's done."

  "I fell down the steps,"Nanrepeated, but she didn't quite meet Tess's eyes. "Dennis gets impatient with me when I'm slow, especially when those rich friends of his come over, and he thinks I'm stupid sometimes, but he…he wouldn't hit me."

  Tess had seen too many victims of brutality to be convinced byNan's story. Working as a nurse was very informative—too informative sometimes.

  She patted the other woman's shoulder gently. "Well, if you ever need help, I'll do what I can for you. I promise."

  Nansmiled, wincing as the motion pulled the cut on her lower lip open. She dabbed at it with her handkerchief. "Thanks, Tess, but I'm okay."

  Tess sighed. "Very well, then."

  The meeting was boisterous, as often happened, and some of the opinions voiced seemed radical even to Tess. But the majority of the members wanted only the right to be treated, at least in the polling booth, as equal to men.

  "The Quakers have always accepted women as equals," one woman said angrily. "But our men are still living in the Dark Ages. Most of them look upon us as property. Even the best men think a woman is too ignorant to render an opinion on any matter of public interest."

  "Yes!" came cries of assent.

  "Furthermore, we have no control over our own bodies and must bear children again and again, whether we're able or not. Many of our sisters have died in childbirth. Many others are so overburdened by children that they have no energy for any other pursuit. But if we mention any sort of birth control, especially abstinence, men brand us heretics!"

  There were more cries of support.

  "We cannot even vote," the woman continued. "Men treat us either as children or idiots. A woman is looked down upon if she even shops for her own groceries!"

  "Or if she works away from the home!" another added.

  "It is time, past time, that we demanded the rights to which any man is legally entitled at birth. We must not accept being second-class citizens any longer. We must act!"

  "Yes, we must!"

  "Yes!"

  They were all in agreement that th
ey should march on city hall as soon as possible. A date was set and leaders designated.

  "I can't go,"Nansaid with a long sigh. "Dennis will be home all day." She barely repressed a shudder. "I wouldn't dare leave the house."

  "You could sneak away," a woman standing nearby suggested.

  "Oh, I couldn't do that,"Nansaid quickly. "He doesn't even like me coming to one of these meetings each week. I have to be so careful to make sure he doesn't know how involved I am. So it's best if he isn't home when I creep off for a rally or an added meeting." Her thin shoulders rose and fell as if they bore a heavy burden. "He works an extra job away from the telegraph office on Mondays and Thursdays, and he's real late getting home, so I can get out and he doesn't know."