Wild Flower

by Cheryl Anne Porter

  A homey, comfortable, intimate scene. Except that, as always, the two of them were at an argumentative impasse.

  In the less-than-three newsworthy weeks that had expired from the night he’d met her, Grey now admitted to himself, he’d been nothing but ambivalent in his dealings with Taylor. First he’d wanted her to go. Then he’d wanted her to stay. Then he’d wanted her to go. And now again, he wanted her to stay. Absurd was what it was. Now she wanted to leave. And he would not hear of it—for any reason, his heart cried out, but especially because she only wanted to leave his house, not St. Louis.

  “I cannot believe you would leave me, Taylor.”

  “I am not leaving you. We are not married—”

  “We could be so this very evening. I could call a justice of the peace and—”

  “Be serious. I am going to stay with my cousin, as I should have done in the beginning.”

  “In the beginning you were going to stay with your father. If you must leave me, why don’t you go to your father’s, instead?”

  “I cannot.”

  And that was all she’d say on the subject, the blastedly stubborn girl. Grey had his hands full. There was no way in hell he could allow her to go to Amanda’s—even more important … to her aunt and uncle’s. Worse, he had to prevent her going for reasons he had sworn not to tell her. Damn that Charles James, anyway.

  So, stuck as he was and having to make his argument with the only weapons he could use, Grey sent her an arch look. “All right. Your cousin. The one whose father most likely would try to kill you, according to what we believe? That cousin? You wish to go stay with her? Taylor, you heard the policeman today. That man you killed was a known hired gun and no mere robber as this same uncle of yours so elaborately claimed. Don’t you wonder who could have hired him? Please go to your father’s, where I know you’ll be safe.”

  “No. I need to go stay with Amanda. For my aunt’s sake.”

  “So you’ve said. And what exactly is it you could do? You’d be in a huge mansion full of rooms, all of them unfamiliar to you, and with an army of servants watching and reporting your every move. Therefore, what more … to ensure your aunt’s safety … could you do that Amanda, with her greater freedom of movement and authority in the same household, could not?”

  Taylor’s chin came up. Grey took a deep breath.… Dear God, he’d wounded her pride. That would only make her more adamant.

  “Amanda is timid with her father. I am not,” Taylor said from behind that inscrutable Cherokee mask of hers.

  “I agree. But again I ask you … what exactly would you do differently than she’s already doing?” Grey frowned at his own question. “Come to think of it, what exactly is she doing? I don’t suppose she’s strapped on a gun and hauled in the police, has she?”

  Through the blue haze of her cigar smoke, Taylor narrowed her eyes at him. A shiver skittered over Grey’s skin. If she ever turned that expression on him in earnest, out of genuine anger or hate, he’d need more than that gun and the police he’d just teased about. Swallowing, displaying bravado, Grey prodded her to speak. “Well?”

  “She has not yet strapped on a gun or involved the police. She is watching over her mother … checking her food and drink and her medicines.”

  “Unbelievable.” Grey shook his head. “How is she checking them? Is she first trying them herself? What if something is poisoned, Taylor? She’s risking her life, somewhat like a king’s taster.”

  Taylor frowned her confusion.

  “A person paid to taste a king’s food first in case his enemies have poisoned it.” Just then, a course of action that could keep Taylor here with him, and her aunt and cousin safe, at least temporarily, popped into Grey’s head. It was so simple. Feeling suddenly better, even expansive, he decided—in a diabolically good-natured way—to continue his baiting of Taylor before he proposed his plan to her. “Never mind about that. I prefer to talk about your behavior. This disloyalty toward me on your part is very eye-opening. I did take a bullet for you.”

  “Now you are pouting like a child. And you did not take a bullet for me. The shooter had a poor aim, that is all.”

  “Oh, pardon me. From where I’m sitting, with this bandage still wrapped around my head, the bastard had pretty good aim.”

  Taylor sipped at her brandy and eyed him over the snifter’s rim. “You are the one who told me I had to leave.”

  “I meant St. Louis and for your own safety. I certainly never meant because I didn’t want you here with me. I do. But now you wish to go merrily leap into the lion’s jaws. I won’t allow it.”

  To Grey’s utter dismay, Taylor didn’t say anything … she simply arched an eyebrow at him and grinned around the cigar she’d stuck back in her mouth. Her expression was a clear-enough answer. He could not allow it all he wanted.… She would do as she damned well pleased. On the one hand, he applauded her. She was one hell of a woman, unlike any other woman he’d ever met. He was absolutely, totally, besottedly head over heels in love with her. And on the other hand, he’d like to choke the life out of her for being so damned stubborn and willful and for scaring the hell out of him by not taking better care to keep herself alive, because she had to know that he would die without her.

  Grey took a deep breath. He’d barely been able to think all that in one sentence without pausing for air. Then he realized that he hadn’t really told her yet that he felt all that for her. Grey looked her in the eye. “I will die without you here.”

  She chuckled as she placed her cigar in the ashtray on his desk and blew smoke out the side of her mouth. “No, you will not. Your head wound is not that bad.”

  Well, so much for romance. His head wound, of course, was not what he’d meant. But he’d use the opening she’d given him. He wasn’t above it. “Yes, it is.” Employing great drama, he put a shaking hand to his head. “I fear I’m suffering a relapse.”

  “What does that mean … a re-lapse?”

  Grey lowered his hand and tamped his cigar’s ash into the ashtray perched on his lap. He also worked to hide his grin. Now he had her and, shamelessly, he was going to keep her. If she wasn’t going to leave St. Louis altogether, then here with him was the safest place for her to stay. He sought her gaze. “A relapse means a worsening of symptoms after one first appears to be getting better. It’s a very dire circumstance. I shouldn’t be alone.”

  “You are not alone. You have ten people on your staff. Besides, it is Mrs. Scott who is now nursing your injury. Not me.”

  Grey grimaced and grumbled. “And how well I know that. The old harridan—that means … well, means ‘old lady,’ I suppose. At any rate, she thinks she still has to sleep in that blamed chair in my room.”

  Taylor’s grin was a sensual tease in itself, but with her foot she poked at his. “Perhaps she, too, fears this awful re-lapse you speak of.”

  Trapped by his own words, Grey sulked openly.

  “Ah. You are angry because it is her and not me in your bedroom.” Taylor took a sip of her brandy. Above its rim, her blue eyes danced with teasing lights.

  “Damned straight I am. And well you know it,” Grey mock-fussed right back. But inside, his heart quickened. It was true. He missed Taylor’s sweet body sleeping next to his. Her scent, the silky feel of her skin, the sweep of her thick, black hair draped over his arm, her touch, her kiss … her wild lovemaking.

  “Then why don’t you, uh, remove the chair from your room?”

  Catching on to her meaning and suddenly animated by anticipation, Grey sat forward, careful of the ashtray and the cigar in it. “Would you come to me if I did?”

  “No. I am done with coming to you. You must now come to me.”

  Grey sat back, loving this sensual innuendo between them. “What’s this, my girl? You wish to be courted?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Then he realized something else that had his pulse leaping. “I see. You’re staying. You couldn’t be courted, I couldn’t come to you, if you weren’t here. You�
�re not leaving, are you? I’ve convinced you to stay, haven’t I?”

  “No. I have decided myself to stay. And I have come up with a better plan than leaving here.”

  “A better—now wait. I, too, have a plan.”

  “I like mine better.”

  “You don’t even know what mine is.”

  “No, I do not. But mine will work better.”

  “Now how can you say that? Tell me what your plan is.”

  “First tell me yours.”

  “Why? So you can say it was yours when you like mine better? I hardly think so.”

  Taylor shrugged. “Have it your way. Tonight tell Mrs. Scott, while she prepares to sleep in the chair in your room—”

  “All right, I’ll tell you my plan.” He lowered his eyebrows over his nose. “I cannot believe you would use, uh, bedroom blackmail on me.”

  Taylor grinned and shrugged and took a sip of her brandy. “It wouldn’t be the first time.” Then her gaze warmed, became hot and sizzling. “I’ll leave my bedroom door unlocked … that is, if you and your head feel up to it.”

  * * *

  The next day started very early and very disastrously. Taylor and Grey were rudely interrupted by a frantic knock on her bedroom door. Taylor’s groan was no longer that of pleasure.

  Grey lifted his head and shouted, “Go away!” The masterful effect was ruined by his being scooted down under the top sheet and … kissing Taylor. So all he’d done was tent the sheet with his head, send a muffled command to his servant, and amuse Taylor with his antics.

  “I say, are you still in there, sir?” This was Bentley … on the other side of the door and again knocking.

  From under the sheet, Grey asked, “What did he say?”

  Rolling her eyes, giving up, Taylor lifted the covers and stared down at her lover, who had this morning fussily discarded the bandaging that encircled his head, saying he didn’t need it or any more nursing from a gaggle of females. Taylor hadn’t been offended because she hadn’t been among the gaggle of females who’d insisted daily on changing his dressing and clucking like hens over him. “Bentley wants to know if you’re still in here.”

  Grey’s face was deadpan. He looked down at her nakedness, kissed her there, and then smiled up at her. “Tell him yes, my oh-so-sweet Taylor. And tell him I would like to stay in here for as long as I live. It’s part of my plan, too.”

  “No, it is not. And I cannot tell him that. He is out in the hall, Grey, and he knows you are here.”

  Grey heaved a sigh. “He doesn’t ever listen to me. You tell him to go away.”

  “Go away!” Taylor called out.

  “I fear I cannot, Miss James.”

  Taylor looked down again at Grey. “He fears he cannot.”

  “The man does not yet know the meaning of fear, I assure you. But once I get at him…” Cursing, fighting the tangling sheet, Grey pulled himself up Taylor, stopping to kiss her skin as he went. Then, lying atop her, his weight supported on his elbows, he yelled to his butler, “Why the devil can’t you go away? Are you tied to the damned doorknob, Bentley?”

  “No, sir, I am not. But I have a message for you both.”

  Grey looked down at Taylor under him. “He has a message for us.” She nodded that she’d heard. Grey turned his head toward the door and called out, “A message? Do you mean from on high, man? Angels and trumpets? That kind of message?”

  There was silence … then, “No, sir.”

  Defeated, Grey lowered his head until his forehead was touching Taylor’s. She arched up and kissed him with little nipping bites on his lips. “I’ll give you thirty minutes to stop that,” he whispered, grinning. But he duly raised his head and again shouted, “Well, spit it out, Bentley! And let me assure you that someone had better be dying!”

  “Oh, sir, I’m afraid someone is. It’s Mrs. James. Mrs. Camilla James. She’s taken a turn for the worse.”

  Taylor tensed, her gaze riveted to Grey’s. Her limbs felt heavy and weak, and it had nothing to do with Grey’s weight atop her. “He has killed Aunt Camilla,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “No,” Grey said, earnest now. “She’s not dead. A turn for the worse, Taylor, is not the same thing as dead.”

  “But it is close.”

  “Yes, it is.” He flung the sheet off them, pulled himself off her, and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the mattress. Taylor was right behind him and already scrambling out of bed. As soon as her feet hit the carpeted floor, she headed for the bathroom.

  Behind her, Grey called out to his butler, “Hold on, Bentley! I’ll need you to do some things. For one, order up the brougham.”

  Taylor jerked around to face Grey and saw he was pulling on his pants. “I will not need the carriage,” she told him. “I will take Red Sky.”

  “No, you won’t, so we will need the brougham. I intend to get your aunt out of that house. And I can’t do it on horseback.”

  “Then take it. But I am going now on Red Sky. We may have to split up for some reason. If so, I want to be able to do that.”

  Grey’s expression hardened, but he didn’t argue with her. Instead, as Taylor watched, he stalked toward the door, opened it a crack, and peered out at Bentley. “Get Calvin up and have him saddle Red Sky.”

  “I won’t need him saddled. It will take too much time.”

  Grey looked over his shoulder at her. He’d firmed his lips until white lines appeared at either side of his mouth. Taylor narrowed her eyes at him. Grey turned again to Bentley. “Get the brougham and Red Sky. And get us some coffee. And Mrs. Scott. Miss James will need help dressing.”

  “Dammit, Grey, I do not need her.” Defiant and naked, already braiding her long hair, Taylor faced Grey’s angry expression. “You are trying to delay me. I can dress myself in my britches and shirt.”

  “You’re not going over there ahead of me and alone, Taylor.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “Then you need to hurry, because I will if I have to. I am also taking my gun and my knife. This is my fight and my family. I will not sit back and wait for carriages and coffee and ladies’ maids. Amanda needs me now.”

  “Yes, she does. But we’re both going, Taylor. Amanda will soon enough be my family, too.” Grey looked as if he meant to say something else, but out in the hall Bentley spoke first.

  “Excuse me, sir. But Miss Amanda’s runner is down in the foyer and awaiting a reply. He says Miss Amanda said to tell Miss Taylor that her mother is calling for her.”

  Taylor frowned, staring Grey’s way. “Aunt Amanda is calling for me?”

  “It’s not all that strange, Taylor … especially if she is as bad off as Amanda says.”

  “But shouldn’t she instead want her own daughter, who is already there?”

  Grey’s expression was unreadable, as if he had carefully blanked it. “I don’t know. We have to hurry, Taylor. You can get that answer for yourself when we’re there.” With that, he looked to Taylor for her answer to Bentley.

  She grabbed a length of ribbon off her dresser and tied it around the end of her braid. “Tell Bentley to have the boy go for the doctor, if Amanda has not already had him do so. And have him tell her not to leave her mother’s side, that we will be there as soon as possible. But first go ask the boy who else is with Amanda.”

  Grey turned to the unseen Bentley and nodded, as if only to confirm that Bentley had heard her. “Yes, miss.” Bentley’s muffled footsteps retreated.

  Taylor grabbed up her discarded bloomers and camisole, tied herself into them, and began searching for her cotton stockings. In her search, her gaze locked suddenly with Grey’s. He was shrugging into his shirt. His expression was grim. Silently they dressed and waited for Bentley’s return. In what seemed like hours but was really less than a few minutes, Bentley spoke from the other side of the door. “Sir? Miss? The boy says Mr. James, her father, is present. That’s good, at least.”

  “Oh no,” Taylor said softly to Grey, hugging herself in an effor
t to stave off the fearful shivering that had her feeling sick.

  His grim expression saying it all, Grey never looked away from her as he called out to his butler, “Thank you, Bentley! Forget the coffee and Mrs. Scott, but have the brougham and Red Sky readied, if you would.”

  “Yes, sir.” Again Bentley’s footsteps could be heard retreating down the hall toward the steps.

  Grey closed the door and, in silence, he and Taylor finished dressing. Suddenly, hurrying shuffling footsteps approached the bedroom door. Taylor froze. Grey followed suit and gave her a look that said, What now?

  The knock on the door made Taylor jump, even though she’d known it was coming. The sound barely preceded Bentley’s excited, fearful voice. “Excuse me, sir, but may I please have a word with Miss James? It is extremely important.”

  “Of course. Hold on.”

  Taylor, now tucking her shirt into her britches, brushed by Grey and opened the door. “Yes, Bentley, what is it?”

  The little man’s face reflected great distress. “I don’t know quite how to say it, miss. Or what it can mean. But I’ve just had the most extraordinary thought or vision—I really do not know what to call it.”

  Taylor’s mouth dried. She gripped the door harder. “Just tell me what you saw.”

  The little old man inhaled deeply and then spoke rapidly. “Well, miss, it came as I passed the mirror in the hall just now. I swear to you that I am forever going to avoid looking into mirrors after this. At any rate, it was that dark shadow, like I saw before. Then it was a cloud. Then it became a big angry bird, black and gray in color. That was frightening enough, but then it was swooping down on you. And you were at Mr. Stanley James’s residence. The bird, though … its beak was opened horribly and it had its talons bared.”