The Wildest Heart (10 page)

“So that's your game!” He had pushed his chair back and was regarding me from beneath lowering brows. Suddenly he gave a harsh laugh. “You're pretty smart, for all that you look like a missionary or a schoolmarm. You can fight me, but I can't afford to let it get around that Todd Shannon's battlin' his own partner, the daughter of my best friend. Yes, and Guy was that, for all that we had our disagreements. So—” he frowned at me, “I guess we're stuck with each other for a while, eh? I don't for a moment think you're gonna like it out here, but for the moment…”

“I was raised in India.” I said flatly. “The climate there is worse, the conditions even more primitive, and those Indians just as savage as the ones you are supposed to have here. But at least our laws of hospitality there were obviously far more gracious than yours.”

He had the grace to flush at last. “By God, but you have a sharp tongue! But I guess I asked for that. Might as well be honest with you, I didn't want no female partner. And as for you, miss, being Guy's daughter, an' him thinking the world of you all these years, I didn't cotton to the fact you didn't write or nothin'.”

“I was taken away to India when I was a baby, Mr. Shannon, and when I returned to England I had no idea of my father's whereabouts, or that he even remembered my existence! I was greeted in Boston by the news that he had died before I could see him again, and then you did your best to show me I was unwelcome. However, a plain woman has one advantage over a pretty one. She becomes used to using her head and fighting her own battles.”

I saw him squinting at me. “You're a feisty one, I'll say that much for you! An' the first woman I've heard say right out she's plain. Makes me wonder…” he leaned his head to one side studying me critically. “Got real purty eyes, now you've taken off them eyeglasses. Long eyelashes, too, an' a nice skin.”

“Oh, please, Mr. Shannon! I beg that you will not disappoint me by resorting to blatant flattery, for I know very well how I look. No, I would rather have honesty, and it would make me happy if you would learn to appreciate the fact that I have a mind, rather than keep reminding me that I'm a female!”

“Ah, Jesus!” Todd Shannon gave me a disgusted look. “A man tries to be polite and gets told off for it! Well, miss, have it your own way. I'll try to forget you're a female, and believe me, if you're going to keep dressin' the way you are in this climate, it ain't gonna be too hard!”

“Well, I'm sorry you don't care for the way I'm dressed, Mr. Shannon, but you'll just have to put up with it, won't you?” I made my voice sound prim, to hide the satisfaction I felt at annoying him. At the time, I did not try to analyze my emotions, nor my reactions to this annoyingly arrogant, irritating man.

We finally parted, after a formal and uncomfortable meal in the hotel's rather small and shabby dining room, I to travel to my new home, escorted by Mark Shannon and some of the SD cowboys who had ridden into town with their boss, and Todd Shannon, relieved at being rid of me for a while, I'm sure, to return to his house.

He had halfheartedly attempted to persuade me to accept his hospitality, but I turned his offer down firmly. I needed room to think and to be alone for a while.

“I would rather be left on my own for a week or so,” I stated bluntly. “All the traveling I've done has left me exhausted, and I intend to be lazy for a while. Besides, I'd like some time to read my father's journals in privacy, and to form my own impressions of life on a New Mexican ranch.”

“You just take all the time you want, miss! Longer the better!”

I only shrugged at his deliberate rudeness. There would be time later to make him regret it. And a time when he would not be able to avoid me. Todd Shannon might be a clever man, a resourceful, arrogant, overbearing man. But he was only a man, after all.

It's amazing now, when I look back, to remember how sure I was of myself. In my way, I was just as arrogant as Todd Shannon!

The next two weeks were the quietest, and yet in some way the most rewarding, period of my life until then. A peaceful interlude, like a bridge spanning the two halves of my life.

I did nothing very constructive. I read. I lazed. I ate when I pleased and went to bed when I felt like it, even if it was for an afternoon siesta. Very occasionally I rode, having chosen a high-stepping little mare of mixed Arabian stock for myself, but I never rode very far, for Marta, who had been my father's housekeeper, had already warned me of the dangers I might encounter. I did not want trouble. I needed only to relax and be myself.

This part of New Mexico reminded me of certain parts of India. It was not too hard to adjust myself all over again to hot days and cool nights, nor to the brilliant, blazing sunlight that assaulted my eyes when I stepped outdoors.

My father's house was built from the earth, just as the houses of the old Spaniards who had first settled this land had been. Sun-browned adobe, whitewashed on the outside to reflect the rays of the sun, with great, massive beams to hold the structure together, and protruding out from the walls. There were two bedrooms, one leading out onto an enclosed courtyard. There I spent most of my time. My father had developed an irrigation system by channeling water from the stream that flowed down a steep canyon a few miles away. The water flowed through a crevice in one of the thick walls that enclosed my retreat, and formed a small, ornamental pool in the courtyard. It was shaded by two willow trees, vines sprawled over the walls on all sides, and in one corner there was a collection of miniature cacti.

If I tired of sunbathing in the patio there was always the flat roof, protected by a low wall about three feet high, and reached through a trapdoor in my bedroom.

Marta informed me, with an apologetic bob of her head, that she hoped I would not find the house too small. It was not even one-tenth the size of the
palacio
of the señor patron, but my father had wanted it so.

“It's charming, and just right,” I assured her, and saw her anxious face break into a smile.

Marta was a brown-skinned
mestiza,
married to Jules, a black ex-cavalryman. Jules had been wounded during the war, and Marta had nursed him back to health. My father had hired them both when Jules found he could get no other work.

“Where would we go? My people are just across the border. I visit them every year. Jules could not take me any other place, for ours would be considered a mixed marriage. And we both wanted to stay on here.”

It was clear that they had both been devoted to my father, and were prepared to become just as devoted to me when I assured them that I meant to make no changes except, perhaps, to hire a girl to help Marta in the kitchen, if she thought it necessary.

“Perhaps later on,” Marta smiled. Her eyes touched me shyly. “When the señorita feels like entertaining? There are bound to be many callers.”

I smiled back at her.

“We'll see,” I said.

To tell the truth, I didn't want to think too far into the future. It was such a new and delicious feeling to live entirely in the present, to exist like one of the lizards that sometimes sunned themselves on the patio walls.

I almost didn't want to think, and it was for this reason that I had been slow in starting to read my father's journals. Instead, I questioned Marta and Jules, gleaning some of their impressions of this land and the people I would have to deal with, and picked up the local Spanish dialect in the process. My precise Castilian Spanish would never do here, for hardly anybody would understand me! I don't think they resented my questions. Jules was a quiet soft-spoken man with prematurely graying hair, but Marta, plump and smiling, enjoyed gossiping and would often stand in my room, flicking a dustcloth, while she chattered enthusiastically.

I had Marta make me some brightly patterned skirts and peasant blouses such as she wore and it was these garments I preferred to wear during the day, when I took the sun in the privacy of my patio.

“Ah, but the señorita must be careful of the sun!” Marta reproved. “It can be dangerous to have too much—and oh, what a pity, if the señorita's lovely, milk-white skin should turn as brown as mine!”

“I wouldn't mind that at all!” I laughed, but I was careful to expose myself fully to the sun only very early in the morning and late in the evening. ‘Mad dogs and Englishmen!' I told myself as I became tanned in spite of all my precautions. Marta clucked and made me special lotions she concocted out of buttermilk, but my tan remained as a faint golden glow that seemed to underlie my usually pale skin.

How pleasant it was not to be bothered by anyone, or by anything that had to be done, I thought. I could go on like this forever! No one would miss me, nor I them.

Todd Shannon would certainly be relieved, and as nice as Mark appeared to be, I had even told him, quite firmly, that I needed time to be on my own.

“I won't press you, of course,” he said gently, his eyes searching mine. “But I hope it will not be too long before you care to receive visitors. You cannot believe how boring it can be here, with nothing to exercise one's mind!”

Poor young man. No doubt he missed Boston and its amusements. For no doubt that his uncle was a hard taskmaster. And maybe Flo Jeffords, who called him her cousin but was no blood relation at all, provided some stimulation for this very polite, proper-seeming young man. He seemed anxious to see me again, but how much of his anxiety was due to the fact that I was an heiress and part owner of the SD? No sooner had I thought this than I chided myself. Hadn't I already vowed that I would no longer make snap judgments about people? No, I'd give poor Mark Shannon a chance. After all, his mother had been more than kind to me.

So, even as I continued to hibernate, I was more than half expecting Mark to call. I would not see him, of course. I had already given Marta instructions that any visitor except Mr. Bragg, whom I was expecting, was to be turned away. But what kind of man would Mark Shannon show himself to be if he did not at least make some token attempt to see me?

I had almost lost track of time. How long had it been, a week? Two, perhaps? My tan went from pale gold to a deeper shade, almost apricot, and I had taken to wearing my hair in two braids, like a Mexican peasant woman. What did I care what I looked like? There was no one here to see me.

And then one day, completely unexpectedly, there was.

It was late afternoon, and I had been reading one of my father's journals, in which he described his early life and his first meeting with Todd Shannon. Somehow, I could not reconcile the virile, handsome young man he described with the boorish giant that I remembered, and I put the leather-bound book down with an annoyed exclamation. I would rather not spoil my evening by thinking of Shannon.

I had barely closed my eyes, lifting my face to the warmth of the sun, when I heard his voice. Loud, arrogant, angry—drowning out my poor Marta's protests.

“Won't see anyone, you say? Out of my way, woman, and stop your damned sniveling! She'll see me, I tell you!”

Before I could say a word, or do anything but leap angrily to my feet, he had burst into the patio, filling it with his presence. And he had had the audacity to stride through my bedroom to get here!

“So there you are!” he said menacingly, but after one icy glance I looked beyond him at Marta, who was wringing her hands.

“It's all right, Marta. You may go now. I will deal with this—this unwelcome intrusion.”

“Intrusion, is it? Well let me tell you Lady Rowena Dangerfield, that I refuse to hide away from facts, or to pretend to be what I ain't, either!” He glared at me, and jerked his head contemptuously, taking me in from the soles of my bare feet to my braided waist-length hair. “Look at you! Sure, an' it's like a Mexican peasant woman you look in that getup! Didn't know what to believe when some of the boys said they'd seen you out ridin' with your hair flyin' and a tan to your face. An' then Mark had this letter from his ma in Boston, and they was all ravin' about what a bloody beauty you were, and your fine, fancy clothes made by some Frenchman, and your jewels.”

“Will you stop shouting at me?” I'm ashamed to confess that I lost my temper at that moment, and was now as angry as he was. “How dare you burst into my house like this and begin to abuse me? How dare you question me? I'll remind you, Mr. Shannon, of something I told you before. You may own one-half of the SD and you may own your stepdaughter and your nephew too, but you don't own me! Don't ever presume to criticize the way I choose to dress, or anything I choose to do!”

I saw angry red color suffuse his face, and for a moment I even thought he might strike me, and I stood my ground with my chin up daring him to do so.

“You—now look, miss, I won't be spoken to that way by any little chit of a girl, partner or not, you hear?”

“How can I help hearing when you don't have sufficient self-control to
lower your voice?”

I looked him contemptuously in the eye, and deliberately planted my hands on my hips, peasant-style. “I wonder if you realize how ridiculous you look? Standing there like a thundercloud and shouting. What on earth do you hope to achieve? Do you imagine that loud noises frighten me? You are such a silly, petty man, Mr. Shannon! Under any other circumstances, your cheap blustering would merely amuse me.”

“So I amuse you, huh?” He said it between his teeth, his head lowered like that of an angry bull. “Well, let me tell you, you knife-tongued little bitch, this is a man's world you're livin' in out here, and like it or not, you're gonna need a man to help you out!”

“And you call yourself a man merely because you are bigger than I am and have a louder voice?”

Knife-tongued, was I? If I had my way, I'd flay this brute of a man alive!

“I don't need any reminders I'm a man, missy! But I got some real doubts whether you've ever learned to be a woman yet. By God, with that tongue of yours an' the way you talk down to a man, there's no doubt you'll end up a dried-up, bitter old maid!”

“Better that than being tied to some oafish man who'll imagine he can make a slave of me,” I flashed back at him.

I had forgotten my dignity, forgotten my resolutions to remain composed. All I knew was that my fingers itched to slap Todd Shannon's face, and I might have done so if he hadn't forestalled me.

“So you'd be pretendin' you don't like men, eh?” he muttered at me, the Irish brogue slipping back into his voice as it did when he was angry. He took me in his arms as if he wished to punish me, and for the first time I raged helplessly against the sheer strength of the man. “We'll see, shall we?” I heard him sneer, and then his lips, those same thin, cruel lips I had hated, came down over mine.

His arms, holding me so closely pinioned against his body that I could hardly breathe, were as immovable as rock. And, damn him, he took his time about kissing me, too. I think he enjoyed my useless struggles, and my choked, furious gasps of outrage. This was his way of teaching me how helpless I really was, and I hated him for it; hated him more because his kisses, as expert as they were, had actually begun to stir up some dormant, unrecognizable feeling in me. I had endured Sir Edgar's kisses and felt nothing at all except a faint annoyance.

But Todd Shannon—oh, God, the man was diabolically clever! His kisses went from anger to passion and then to feigned tenderness. I think he knew how he made me feel and took a delight in it.

Sheer desperation made me clever and I pretended to relax in his arms, hearing him chuckle deep in his throat. I closed my eyes and pressed closer to him, and his arms loosened slightly.

“Damned if there wasn't a woman hidin' under all that ice, after all,” he whispered, and a jolt of sheer, unadulterated rage swept me at his crowing conceit.

I freed an arm and raked at his face with my nails, exulting in the stunned, stupid look I surprised in his eyes for a moment.

“You big ape! Did you really imagine I enjoyed your kisses?”

“God damn you for a cheatin' bitch!”

He knocked my hand away, almost breaking my wrist with the force of his anger, and then as I brought both hands up he seized my wrists, forcing them behind me, so that he had me held closely against his chest.

“Like any little bitch, you need to be shown who's master,” he snarled. “You've been provokin' me, and you've teased me deliberately, but by God, you're gonna pay off now!”

Every time I attempted to twist my head aside he would laugh and give my wrists a jerk I felt sure would shatter them, and forced a moan of pain through my stiff lips. In the end, as he had been sure I would, I yielded and let him kiss me for as long as he wanted to, until my lips felt swollen and bruised and opened of their own accord to accept his seeking tongue.

I saw scarlet sparks from the last strong rays of the rapidly setting sun reflected in his blue green eyes, when at last he lifted his head. But this time he did not laugh.

“Damned if you ain't the strangest woman I've ever met! An' Godalmighty stubborn as well. What am I gonna do with you?”

I had never felt more humiliated in my life as I did then, with tears of self-pity and rage prickling behind my eyelids. I could almost have endured a brutal rape better than I could the memory of his slow, deliberate kisses, his forcing of a response from me. For I had responded, and that was the worst humiliation of all.

“You might release me to begin with,” I managed in a husky, low voice. “And after that, perhaps you'll leave, if you're sure the display of brute strength is over.”

“Girl, why won't you learn to hold your tongue? We could get on together, you and I—”

I would not let him finish. “Because you feel you've got the best of me? Or because you imagine I might just be a convenient outlet for your moments of passion?”