by Diana Palmer
"You were," she agreed, and wondered just how brave she felt like daring to be.
"In what way?"
"You weren't ashamed of your people."
It was a mistake; she knew it instantly. His hand clenched around the thick tulip glass. He didn't speak, but his black eyes did. Her gaze fell before his hot intensity.
"I told you that you shouldn't ask." She felt very uncomfortable. "I'm sorry."
He didn't say a word. He sat very still and finished his soda. "Are you through?" he asked in a curt, deep tone a few minutes later.
She nodded.
He got up, left a tip, and escorted her out the door.
"I said that I was sorry," she said after they'd gone half a block.
"You can't imagine what I feel," he said under his breath, "to be part of such a nation. They sit and starve on the reservations, freeze to death, drink illegal whiskey, and complain about the lack of rations and the poor quality of the blankets." He stopped, his eyes on the city skyline. "I came here with nothing. I scrimped and saved and studied. I learned. I did whatever mean little job I was offered, anything that would help me to advance in my work. Two years ago—almost three years, now—I quit Pinkerton and opened my own detective agency, and I've become well-to-do because I was willing to work for what I wanted."
"You've had advantages that the others haven't," she said, lifting her face. She had to look up, a long way up. "Some of them have tuberculosis and some are crippled. Others have lost so much family that they're afraid to take a chance. Still others don't want to have to depend on the whites for survival, but they have no other options. They're too weak in numbers to fight, too proud to beg, too poorly educated or informed to know even where to begin to try for a new way of life. You were lucky."
"Too lucky," he ground out. "For God's sake, don't you understand?" He looked down at her with anguished eyes. "I don't belong anywhere now! I can't go back to warpaint and hunting buffalo, but I'll never be white either."
She put a gloved hand on his arm and let it rest there. "You carry an air of mystery around with you. No one knows exactly where you come from, or what your background is. That won't change unless you want it to.Chicagois big."
"Not big enough to escape prejudice," he said harshly. "Or haven't you noticed?"
She sighed. "Of course I've noticed. I can't change the world. I can only do my best to help keep it going around. Women aren't having an easy time either. You know what I've gone through trying to work as a nurse. I still can't imagine why people think it so indecent a profession."
His grim look began to dissolve. His lips tugged up into a reluctant smile. He bent. "You get to look at naked men," he said teasingly.
Flustered, she colored."Imost certainly do…do not!" she said. She couldn't look at him. She was carrying around a secret about their shared past that he didn't know.
"How does one avoid it?"
"One calls an orderly or a physician!" She pressed her fingers agitatedly against her wide-brimmed hat. "Of all the outrageous things to say!"
He chuckled. "We seem to have become addicted to saying outrageous things to each other." He shifted and took her ann. "Perhaps we're both too sensitive"
"One of us is," she agreed.
He pinched her arm—the uninjured one—gently and made her jump. "I am not sensitive."
"And cows fly," she muttered.
He walked her to the corner and then across the wide street, avoiding carriages and the occasional motorcar, because there was a sprinkling of the newfangled inventions loose in the city. Matt had hated the inventions since he'd been forced inside one inAtlanta, working on a case for a friend.
"Have you ever metNan's husband?" he asked when they were safely across.
"Nan Collier's husband, Dennis? No. I wanted to visit her, but she said that it wouldn't be a good idea at all. Since her husband doesn't approve of the women's movement, I think he might be rude to any of her friends who called."
He hesitated, uncertain about how much he should tell her. She was just getting over the attack, which had made her unsettled enough. She didn't really need to know. But it was hard not to tell her. Suppose the man tried again? Or she went home unexpectedly with her friendNan? Matt couldn't protect her, under those circumstances, and Collier would have unrestricted access to her.
"You're holding back something," she said, eyes narrowed.
He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked down at her. "Yes, I am. I know who stabbed you."
Her heart seemed to skip a beat. "You do? Who?"
"It was your friendNan's husband, Tess," he replied grimly.
She put a hand to the lace at her throat and mentally cursed the corset that made her even shorter of breath than the surprise did. "Heavens! Are you sure?"
"Yes. I tracked him down and satisfied myself that he was the one. I made some veiled threats, Tess, and I don't believe he'll bother you again."
She shook her head. "I can't believe it. I just can't believe it. Why?"
"Because he thought you were an accomplice."
"Ibeg your pardon?"
He looked around them. They weren't being watched by the passersby, but he didn't like to discuss private matters in public places. "Come with me."
He drew her along to a wrought-iron bench among some trees and sat her down, taking his place beside her.
"How much do you really know about Nan Collier?" he began.
"A lot less than I know about you," she volunteered.
He ignored the faint teasing note in her voice. "I suspect she might be having an affair, Tess."
Her face felt stiff "An affair? You mean she's seeing someone besides her husband?"
"Yes, and using the women's meetings to cover up. Collier may have suspected or actually caught her atitand blamed you as an accomplice. He could believe you were helping her meet her lover."
"As if I would ever be party to such a sordid thing!" she exclaimed, furious.
"I know that, but you're a complete stranger to Collier. The man was beside himself when he alluded to it."
"Do you know who it is, the man she's involved with?"
"Not yet. But I will. One of my detectives is watching your Mrs. Collier. And you're not to warn her, Tess," he added firmly. "You're involved in something dangerous: A man who won't hesitate to attack a woman with a sword cane in a crowd means business. And I don't think wounding you was his objective at all. I think that he meant to kill you." Matt's expression was grim.
Tess's breath escaped in a soft, ragged sigh. "But I knew nothing of any affair," she said huskily.
"I realize that. But my word alone, and even a threat, might not be enough to dissuade him. Even worse, he seems to have some connections—" He broke off, pausing for a second, then added, "I assigned one of my brightest young detectives to this case, Tess. Late this afternoon he reported some information that's…well, alarming, if true. I'm not going to say more until we've had a chance to sift through all this, evaluate it, and follow up leads."
Tess's mind was whirling with these revelations.
"Now that you know," he continued, "you'll be more careful, and more alert. I saw no reason to protect you; knowledgeis freedom, Tess."
"I should have been furious if you had withheld all this. I'm not afraid of hard facts."
"Iknow."
She looked up at him from under the brim of her hat, her green eyes searching. And in that moment she knew that Matt was as eager as she to be free for a few minutes at least from this worrying new situation. Lightly, then, she said, "Maybe you'd better lend me that terrible knife of yours."
"You'd cut your hand off," he said, chuckling.
"I can shoot a bow and skin a deer."
"When you were fourteen."
"Do you think I stopped doing those things because you left forChicago?" she asked haughtily. "You had cousins at Lame Deer who also leftSouth Dakotaafter the massacre. I became well acquainted with some of them."
"Did your fathe
r know?"
"Ofcourse."
"Did he approve?"
"My father was never able to stop me from doing anything that I really wanted to do, as you well know. He never thought it was ladylike for me to do the things you taught me, but then, I never pretended to be a lady."
"Yet you are one, Tess." He stared at her with appreciation. "Despite that terrible temper and outrageous independence."
"I do not have a temper, sir. It's just that I sometimes have strong opinions." Suddenly she couldn't sustain the banter any longer. Her expression serious, she asked, "Matt, what aboutNan?"
"What do you mean?"
"Will he hurt her? I mean, if he was willing to stab me…even kill me, shouldn't we fear forNan? I mean, won't he be even worse to her, if he thinks she's cheating on him and—"
"I was able to find out that he's been beating her fairly regularly," he said. "The neighbors even appealed to her elder sister to intervene on one occasion, but when she and her husband arrived,Nanswore that she'd fallen down the stairs. She refused to leave or allow her sister to call in the police." His face became set. "Amazing, isn't it, the lengths a woman will go to in her efforts to protect a brute of a husband?"
"She might be afraid that he'll kill her if she has him put in jail, then he gets out. Many women tolerate brutality as the lesser evil to being murdered. In other cases it's a woman's own security she's protecting," Tess added sadly. "Many of these mistreated wives have children and no hope of supporting themselves, no family to turn to. If they have the husband locked up, what are they to do—go on the…well, on the streets to earn a living?"
"A hellish living," he said coldly, since he'd seen the way such women ended their young, miserable lives.
"Which is why our group is working so hard to change the way society treats women," she said. "Men, most of them, will turn a blind eye to a woman's bruises and humiliation because they convince themselves the women brought such punishment on themselves. Men stick together like glue when one of them is threatened with the law."
"Not all of us."
She lifted her eyes to his. "Not you," she said softly. "Regardless of the provocation, you aren't the sort to hurt anything or anyone who is defenseless."
He laughed without humor. "You think you know me so well."
"Part of you is a closed book," she replied thoughtfully. "But I know that you would never attack an enemy, even a hateful enemy, who couldn't fight back."
He didn't answer her. Unseeing, his eyes seemed to be focused on distant buildings.
She handled her purse restlessly. "In years past, you weren't so reticent and hard to talk to."
"In years past, you were a child."
"Idon't understand."
He turned toward her. "Why did you refuse the advances of the soldier back inMontana?"
"He was a butcher!" she exclaimed.
"You are in your mid-twenties," he persisted. "Your father told me several times that you had no interest in men whatsoever, that you refused invitations to social occasions and even to dances. Why?"
Her gloved fingers clutched her purse, distorting its contours. "I find most men irritating."
"No answer at all," he returned.
She managed to drag her gaze from his obsidian eyes to his firm mouth and then to his tie. Her heart was beating madly. She wanted to get up and run, an impulse so unlike her normally fearless state that it shocked her.
His long arm slid along the bench behind her and he bent his head closer so that he could see under the brim of her hat. His eyes were relentless on her flushed face.
"Am I the reason you never married?"
For a few seconds, the sound of his breath at her temple was all she could hear.
Her docility betrayed her to Matt. Tess wasn't docile. She was fiery and outspoken. To see her like this was electrifying. He touched her softly rounded chin, turned it, tilting her face up.
His thumb ran gently across her full lower lip, a whisper of sensation that made her tremble visibly and almost cost him his control. In that instant, without a word being spoken, everything became clear to him. Her lack of enthusiasm for suitors, her arrival inChicago, her refusal to become involved with local society. She averted her eyes.
He dropped his hand with a rough breath and withdrew. He might have been in another city suddenly, his remoteness was so complete. He was stunned. Speechless. He could hardly dare to let himself believe what he'd seen in her lovely face.
Gamely Tess ignored the implications of that stare and the sigh that had followed it. She got to her feet, pretending that nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
"I must go back to the boardinghouse," she said stiffly. "I am still a little weak from the wound."
"As you wish."
He didn't take her arm. He walked silently beside her, buried in his own tormented thoughts.
He opened the gate for her and remained on the other side when it closed. "I won't be at home very much for the next several days because of a case I'm working on. Don't linger at the hospital after your shifts end," he said as if nothing of any import had happened. "Get straight into the hired carriage, making sure the driver is Mick Kennedy—and only Mick Kennedy. Do you understand?"
She nodded.
"It's dangerous for you to be out alone," he said firmly.
"As if you'd care if I landed in a ditch with a knife in my ribs!" she exclaimed unfairly, surprising him with a burst of fury. His pointed lack of interest in her deepest feelings hurt terribly."Asfor staying out late, I'll do what I please, and you can…you can…Oh!"she ended in a burst of pure fury as her struggle for the right words fell flat.
She didn't look back as she mounted the steps and went into the house. Perhaps if she acted normal, she might begin to feel normal.Itwas more than she could bear to look at him again after his pointed, humiliating question about her love life. Well, he certainly didn't love her. He'd made his opinion of white women blatantly clear over the years, and even strangers knew how he felt about mixed-blood children. She'd been building sand castles in the surf, and it had to stop.
She smiled politely at Mrs. Mulhaney and went quickly up the staircase before the woman could speak to her. She was feeling more and more uncomfortable under this roof. Soon, she decided, she was going to have to move farther away from Matt and his overly conventional landlady.
That would require some care, she thought, since there were more boardinghouses with bad reputations than good. She didn't want to end up in the white slave trade herself. Perhaps one of the nurses or even one of the women in her group might know of a respectable place where she could lodge.
Everything she felt was suddenly out in the open. It was visible. Matt knew how she felt, and he'd said nothing at all about it. He was ignoring it because she was white. She couldn't bear to have him look at her with pity. Better to break her own heart than give into settling for crumbs.
* * *
Tess was welcomed back to the hospital Monday after a weekend of not even catching a glimpse of Matt. Despite the twinges in her arm, she enjoyed her work. It was good to stay busy when nursing a broken heart.
The young amputee, Marsh Bailey, was happy to see her. "I've been desperate for a sight of you," he said, his sad eyes lighting up when she paused by his bed. "The older nurses are very unsympathetic."
They'd had years to become hardened, Tess thought, as any good nurse had to be or lose her sanity. She was already unsettled by this young man's clinging nature. He had been becoming obsessed with her before she was hurt; apparently his feelings about her had become even more charged in her absence. She felt extremely uncomfortable with him now. He was only a patient to her, but he wanted more than her nursing skill.
"I've been thinking," he said in a quick, agitated tone, "that we might live in a smaller town north of here when we marry."
"Marsh," she burst out, "I won't marry you."
He was perspiring rather profusely, and his eyes had a glassy, glazed quality. "Yo
u must," he said earnestly, clutching at her hand. "You've kept me alive.Onlyyou. You must marry me, or I have no reason to want to live! They have taken my leg, Tess. I shall be a cripple. I need you!"
She pulled away from him and made rather a thing of checking the thermometer before she placed it in his mouth. "Be a good boy," she said in a gentle but neutral voice. "Let me take your pulse."
His eyes were turbulent, and his pulse mirrored it. She grimaced as she felt it at his wrist under her firm, cool fingers. His agitation was puzzling.