The Wildflowers at the Edge of the World

by Shaylin Gandhi

  To her surprise, he smiled. Had she ever seen that before? It softened his whole face, sending the strangest warmth sneaking in. “If you don’t understand me,” she said, “how come you’re always doing just the right thing?”

  “I’m not. I can never tell how you’re feeling, or what you want. I don’t know how to make you happy.”

  “But you do. Keeping me safe, even when it puts you in harm’s way. Giving me whiskey for breakfast. Protecting me from the likes of them.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Seems you’re the only man who ain’t never tried to change me.”

  “Changing you isn’t my place. Madam Irene told me loving somebody means letting them be themselves.”

  His words cut the rest of the world away. Just like that, the shouting, the laughter, the cigar smoke all vanished, until she found herself in an empty room, alone with this strange-faced barman and his beautiful mouth. “What’d you just say?”

  “Changing you isn’t my—”

  “No. I heard that part. I mean…you love me?”

  “Oh. Yes.” He said it like it was self-evident—like it was something she should’ve known all along.

  Her heart doubled in size then, opening wide to admit a rush of honeyed sweetness. She happily drowned in it, and though it was none of the fire she’d felt for Samuel, she welcomed it all the more. “I kinda like you, too, sugar.”

  Straightening, Palmer set down his rag. “You…do?”

  She answered with a deep drag from the whiskey bottle. More than anything, she wanted to ride this wave, let the liquor’s smolder push her to some place even sweeter. “You know how you could make me happy? Right now?”

  “How?”

  Do something reckless. “Kiss me. Would you do that?”

  Palmer looked as close to surprised as she’d ever seen. “With great pleasure, Miss Marigold.”

  She spent another moment watching him, letting anticipation rush along her skin until her face tingled. Distantly, someone shouted for the Flower of the North, but he might’ve hollered from a different planet, for all she cared. Behind her, the world quieted to a dim shadow.

  There was Palmer’s mouth—luscious, inviting, flaring in her vision like a candle flame against the dark. She wondered at the taste until eagerness drove her off the stool.

  Had he ever kissed anyone before? Probably not. Tall, gangly, too-proper Palmer wasn’t exactly a ladies’ man.

  No matter. She’d go easy, at first.

  With her heart leaping into a frenzied gallop, she took his hand and pulled him through the dusky kitchen, into his haven underneath the stairs.

  Closing the bedroom door, she turned. “Just so you know, sugar, I ain’t expecting—”

  When he stepped in, the rest burned to electric dust on her tongue. His palms came up, cupping her cheeks, while long fingers tangled in her hair. He thrust her against the door with a fervor that robbed her of breath.

  Lush shadows and oil light swirled, centered around the red-brown gleam of his eyes. Caught and breathless, she fought her corset for air.

  Palmer pressed his mouth to hers.

  The touch of his lips obliterated everything, blotting out the room and the need to breathe and thought itself. She no longer remembered what she’d meant to say, or why she’d ever hesitated to touch him, or anything at all.

  Lightning scorched down to the very center of her being. She opened as deeply as she could, tangling her tongue against his, sinking into his nectar welcome.

  Christ, but he tasted the way a field of wildflowers smelled. Riotous and raw, he kissed her in a way that reminded her of storm clouds devouring the sky.

  She pulled back, marveling. Who was this man? Clearly, she’d been wrong about the never-been-kissed part.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  “Not a goddamn thing, sugar.”

  He watched her intently, his fingers splayed across her hip. “Why’d you stop?”

  Already, she wanted more, wanted to lose herself.

  Do something reckless. “Well, when I asked you to kiss me, I hoped you might pick someplace…naughtier.”

  He blinked slowly. “Like, in church?”

  She laughed, letting an impish grin take hold. Gluttony—her oldest, sweetest friend—woke and demanded more.

  Reaching two fingers into the waistband of his trousers, she edged away the fabric to find the warm, tender skin beneath.

  “Naw. I want you to…” She leaned up and whispered the rest in his ear, relishing the way his fingers tightened against her waist in response.

  He bent to kiss her. The sensuous honey scent of wildflowers consumed her again.

  Before she lost her breath, she spoke against his mouth. “Would you do that?”

  “With great pleasure, Miss Marigold.”

  ***

  Just as she’d hoped, he shattered her, then put her back together again like a puzzle. Except…he kept the very last piece for himself, stashed in his pocket. Some tiny part of her changed, linked to him in a way that frightened and delighted her and made her want to run around shouting in the streets.

  Weak and wobbly, she raised her head. “Holy buckets. Where in Sam hell did that come from?” Her voice came out thick—drunk-sounding. Was she drunk? Whiskey whispered in the space between thoughts, sure, but mostly she felt melted, glued to the bed by an immense weight.

  “You didn’t expect me to please you?”

  “I don’t know what in the hell I expected, sugar. But it sure wasn’t that. That was…wicked.”

  “You liked it?”

  “There ain’t even words to describe how much.”

  He gathered her in his arms and she welcomed him. His bare limbs were too long, mostly just a collection of sharp angles, but she delighted in the feeling, so different than Samuel.

  The way he stared down struck her, too: his eyes held on without letting go. When he looked, he really looked, no glancing away, no softening the intensity.

  Blinking away the lingering vestiges of bliss, she studied him back. His odd features might’ve been carved from rough stone, if not for the berry lushness of his bow-shaped mouth, so at odds with the rest of him. By comparison, Samuel St. Clair had been a hundred times more perfect, more handsome. But Samuel had never been beautiful, not in the innocent way Palmer was now, with lamplight reflecting like stars in his eyes.

  “It’s easy to make you happy,” he said, “when you tell me what to do.”

  “I’m liable to tell you more often, if that’s what happens.”

  She meant it as a joke, but he nodded somberly. Already, his passionate, earth-shattering alter ego had vanished, and now he became himself again, solemn and poker-faced.

  “It’s difficult for me,” he said. “I can’t read people’s faces the way everyone else can. I look at you now and have no idea what you’re feeling.”

  “Drunk. Perfect. Like my brain melted out on the floor in the best way possible.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  She stretched into a smile. “And what’re you feeling, sugar?”

  He thought. “Pride. When you make noises like that…when you say yes and more, then I know what you want. I know what to do. I like that.”

  A little laugh chuffed up from her depths. “Well, that makes two of us, then, don’t it?”

  ***

  Some time near dawn, Annie shot up, roused from blissful slumber by the acrid sting of smoke. Beside her, Palmer slept, breathing deeply.

  “Holy buckets.” She sprang up, visions of the Reverend and George Carmichael parading through her head. Somewhere close by, something was on fire.

  Panic flared. Throwing Palmer’s discarded shirt over her head, she raced across the room in bare feet and threw open the door to the kitchen.

  Relief flooded in. Sophia stood by the stove in a chemise, surrounded by a billow of dark smoke. Sidelong sunlight struggled through the foul haze.

  Annie closed the bedroom door. “Holy buckets, girl. Are you cooking?”r />
  With a sigh, Sophia scraped a black mess from the frying pan into the feed bucket. “I was trying, at least. I couldn’t find the Professor. Guess I see why. Are you naked?”

  Crossing the room, Annie threw open the back door, then peered into the feed bucket and wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know what in Sam hell that is, but the horses sure won’t eat it.”

  Sophia scrubbed at the ruined pan. “So…you and Palmer?”

  “Looks like.”

  “That’s good. ’Cause I have some bad news.”

  Annie’s stomach turned over. “I ain’t in the mood for bad news.”

  “I should probably tell you that your husband is in town, anyway.”

  Annie’s legs nearly gave out. Everything went sticky at the corners, as if the world were an egg dropped onto a hot griddle. “Christ. Samuel?”

  “One brown eye, one blue, just like you said. A U.S. Marshal, too.”

  Staggering to the table, she crumpled into a chair, barely registering the scrape of rough wood against her bare bottom. “Christ,” she said again, clear out of words. She’d known this day would come.

  But she wasn’t ready. Not even close.

  Sophia returned to scrubbing. “He’s carrying around a picture in his pocket.”

  Nausea gripped her, driving away the evening’s sugared afterglow. “Of me?”

  “Yeah.”

  Annie shook her head, her mind spinning like a pinwheel. Words came out, but it was as if someone else was saying them. “Did you say anything?”

  Sophia shook her head. “Of course not.”

  That should’ve given her hope. But the place where hope lived had gone black and silent. And there was more. She just knew. “Why’s your face as long as a Yukon winter right now?”

  Silence. Sophia stood still as midnight, her back turned. “I kissed the Reverend. On my own, this time.”

  “What?”

  “He…acted like he cared. I lost myself.” Sophia transferred the pan to the wash bucket. “When I’m with him, I forget sometimes. I even told him we have the journal. By accident.”

  A sudden ache took up residence in Annie’s forehead. First Samuel, then the Reverend… “Christ. You need to stay away from him. I thought you liked girls, anyway.”

  “Well, men, too.”

  “Oh, great. Never thought I’d want you to be a Sapphic so damn bad.”

  “Do you hate me?” Sophia spoke the question in a strange monotone. Her shoulders bowed and flexed as she punished the pot.

  Annie sighed. What kind of nonsense question was that? “Naw. I love you. Even when you act a fool.”

  “Oh. Well. Okay. Good.”

  “You ever heard of a long con, though? ‘Cause that’s what Gray’s doing.”

  Abandoning the pan, Sophia sat down. “A long con?”

  “When a confidence man, just like our dear, sweet Reverend, takes the long view. He picks himself a target, then cozies into her life until she thinks he cares. He tells her what she wants to hear, and when the time comes to pull the wool over her eyes, he don’t have to. She’s already pulled it over her own.”

  Sophia sighed. “You’re probably right.”

  “Stay away from him. We’ll burn the journal, turn the town against him somehow. Then we’ll put him on a paddle wheeler and kiss his holy blond ass goodbye forever.”

  Sophia sat too still.

  “That’s what you want, sugar, ain’t it?”

  Shrugging, Sophia stood up and carried the slop bucket through the back door, out into the saffron morning.

  “Don’t think you’re escaping that easy.” Annie followed, her bare feet squelching in the mud. “What do you want?”

  Sophia stopped cold, her eyes brimming with some unnamed emotion. “I don’t know anymore.” She waited, looking lost, as the horizon exhaled crimson. Rising light lit her face on one side, leaving the rest in shadow.

  Squishing across the muddy paddock, Annie offered a hug. “Look. We’ll sort out this mess, one way or the other. But I shouldn’t have to tell you he’s evil.”

  Sophia leaned in, but her chuckle sounded brittle. “No. We won’t sort it out. The Reverend’s going to win. He’s doing something to me. I don’t even know what.”

  The declaration sent Annie’s heart curling into a ball like a frightened armadillo. She dug up a brave face somewhere, though. “Naw. He won’t. Samuel won’t, neither. We’ll still be here long after them two’re gone. We’re women. We endure.”

  “I should’ve just shot Samuel, like I said I would.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.”

  Sophia chewed on her lip, deep in thought. “I’m sorry.” Then, as the day flowered, she picked up the slop bucket and walked away.

  41. Kendall Blumen’s Diary.

  Pliskin suspects me.

  I no longer cower before him. Instead, I wear fine clothes, come and go as I please, and meet his foul stares ounce for ounce. More often than not, he looks away first.

  I’m not foolish enough to think him repentant. No—he sees the burning dream of vengeance I carry, feels the heat of it when I turn my gaze loose. I can taste revenge now, a sharp and stingingly sweet thing that looms closer by the day. Pliskin tastes it, too.

  Except for him, it tastes like fear.

  The others begin to abandon him. His power wanes, mine waxes. It began with Kitty. I bought her a sparkling blue shawl, cheap in the garish way she prefers. No hidden costs, no strings attached, as there always were with Pliskin.

  Now, the others come—shyly, at first—asking for pocket money. I give it freely, and each shining penny lures them a step further from Pliskin’s control. I dream of something larger, too. Of tempting them to their freedom, of liberating these broken spirits from the sweaty grip of a selfish tyrant who sells the days of their lives as if they’re disposable.

  All except Mother. She nurtures shame now, seems to have siphoned mine away and kept it for herself.

  I’ve never told her where my newfound money came from, and she’s never asked. She simply assumes. “I never wanted this life for you,” she whispered one day.

  I’ll remember that moment forever, how she saw my fine garments and judged me. Not once did she wonder if I’d earned them with my wits. Instead, she deemed me a whore. The hurt I harbored tempered to hate, then, thrust like a hot iron into the cold bucket of her disgust.

  But I’m nothing like Mother. I’ve sworn to die before letting another man touch me the way Pliskin did. Besides, what I peddle now is worth more than fleeting pleasure—I sell people their own dreams made whole, and they smile at the price.

  So, as much as I hate sharing a roof with Mother, I won’t abandon the house. Here, I have access to unlimited fodder, to an endless parade of foolish johns.

  There’s one in particular—Lord William Gray. Kitty says he’s been visiting since before I was born.

  The somber color he shares a name with suits him. He’s cold and closed, blond-haired and stiff, with the ridiculous speech of a Brit who considers himself a gentleman. Maybe he truly is a lord. I don’t know. All I know is that his eyes follow me, scurrying after my steps like rats. His intent isn’t as apparent—he doesn’t flourish his lust like a sword, as Pliskin does. But this is a brothel. What other reason would a lord have to scrutinize me so?

  I’ve decided he’s next.

  42. Temperance.

  Relentless daylight finally dragged her from slumber, some time after noon. Cheerful sunshine streamed through the window, lighting spirals of dancing dust.

  Yet her body felt leaden.

  Temperance lay in bed and inspected the ceiling. Tomorrow, she would beg. She would welcome the Reverend and do her very best to change his mind. But would warmth and honesty be enough? She feared not. Now that she understood the extent of his schemes, hope seemed to have abandoned her.

  Greed like that knew no end.

  Dragging herself from bed, she tried to let go of her looming dread by reminding herself she still h
ad Irene’s journal. No matter what happened tomorrow, in four days, she’d speak her piece in court, and the fate of the Blossom would be decided. She had to believe that, without the journal, the Reverend would have no claim against her.

  She drifted a hand against the Bible on her nightstand. The smooth sigh of leather whispered a promise of strength, girding her.

  Faith. Have faith.

  ***

  By the time Temperance found the stairs, she walked straight-backed and clear-eyed. When she entered the parlor, she sought Sophia’s graceful profile, as she had every morning since the sharpshooter had pulled her from the river. Instead of evoking the now-familiar flutter, though, Sophia’s expression stopped Temperance in her tracks.

  “What’s wrong?” she said, panic flaring. “Is someone hurt?”

  Down the bar, Annie chuckled, but her blue eyes offered all the warmth of a winter sky. She listed on her stool, looking more drunk than usual. “Naw. Our gold’s gone. Someone marched right in here last night and emptied us out. We got no way to pay the Reverend tomorrow. It’s all over.”

  Horror lodged in Temperance’s throat. “What? No. Someone must’ve moved it.”

  “Sure. Straight into his own damn pocket.”

  On the bar, three bins yawned like sad, empty mouths. Drawing close, Temperance dragged a hand across the bottom of one. Her fingertips came away coated and glittering—just enough dust to buy a crust of bread.

  Her heart sank. Amid the flashes of yellow, images of a masked outlaw invaded her mind.

  She should’ve realized their money wasn’t safe, even in their own house. “But how? The Professor was at the bar all night.”

  Annie flushed nearly as red as her flaming hair. “Naw. He wasn’t.”

  Temperance looked up, her chest churning. Palmer gazed back, but he pinned his focus to her forehead, as if he couldn’t bear to look her in the eye.

  “Is that true, honey?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

  “But why’d you leave the parlor?”

  “Because I wanted to.”

  She frowned. He wasn’t being deliberately evasive. He was just being…Palmer. She rephrased. “What did you do after you left?”