The Savage Heart

by Diana Palmer

  "Have they given you anything, Marsh, any medication?" she asked as she let go of his wrist to make a note of the pulse rate on his chart. There was no indication of any recent drug having been given him.

  "No," he mumbled around the thermometer.

  She took it out of his mouth and checked it. He had no fever. Those glazed eyes puzzled her.

  He caught her hand. "You must marry me! I'll…I'll do something desperate if you don't!"

  She gently disengaged her fingers. "Now, Marsh, you don't mean that."

  "I do! I swear I do!"

  She was dismayed by her own stupidity in allowing this situation to develop. An impulse to be kind to a frightened young man, to listen to his fears, to make him comfortable, to soothe him—and it had led to this! She hadn't meant to encourage him in any amorous way, but the consequences of her actions were frightening.

  "Marsh, you've been very ill," she said. "You'll get better. It's natural for a man to become fond of his nurse, just as it's natural for a desperately ill woman to feel an attachment to a physician who saves her life. It will pass."

  He looked wild-eyed, overexcited. "It isn't an attachment. I love you!"

  "You think you do," she said evenly. "I promise you, it will pass. I have other patients to attend, Marsh, but I'll check on you later." She gave him a cool, remote smile, and left the bedside with his chart. This was the only way to control the situation now, to ignore it. She couldn't allow his obsession to continue.

  She went about her duties woodenly for the rest of the day, vaguely aware of Marsh's accusing eyes on her from the other end of the ward. He'd get over it, she told herself. He had to. He was being released in a few days. He'd go home to the uncle and aunt with whom he lived upstate and forget her. He must, because she had nothing in her to give him. Every thought and feeling she possessed, all she was, had belonged to Matt since she was fourteen years old. Even if he didn't want them.

  But she did, at least, have an outlet for her anguish. She would devote her life to nursing and advancing the women's movement, and try never to grieve for Matt. There would be no children, no home, no husband to cherish. Her life would be one of service and sacrifice. And if she wept for her losses of an evening, then no one would know except herself.

  There was a certain nobility about sacrifice, she thought sadly. Perhaps it would compensate for the things she could never have.

  She finished her tasks, and at the end of her duty hours, she went to change back into her street clothes in the room provided by the hospital. When she came out again, neatly dressed in a black suit with a white lacy blouse and simple hat, she noticed a commotion at the end of the ward where she worked.

  Curious, she moved swiftly down the hall and stopped where a doctor was just lifting his head.

  "Gone," he pronounced. "There's nothing more we can do." He started to pull up the sheet, paused, and scowled. "Here, what's this?"

  He produced a small dark bottle with a cork stopper. He took the stopper out and sniffed. "Opium," he said angrily. "He's taken the whole bottle!"

  Tess's white face told its own story. The elder nurse saw her and came forward, her rigid features softening just a little when she saw the effect of Marsh's demise on Tess's face.

  "Tess, he was an addict," she said. "Didn't you know?"

  Tess shook her head, speechless, her face as white as flour.

  "He had this smuggled in, of course," the doctor added angrily. "There should be a law against this foul substance! It was the opium which caused the accident in the first place, you know. He was so drugged that he didn't even see the carriage coming; he walked right out in front of it. And now, knowing he might be unable to hold down a job and pay for this filthy stuff, he ended his life."

  "You mean, it wasn't…because of me?" Tess asked weakly.

  The doctor saw her pallid features and came closer. "No, my dear. Of course not," he assured her. "It was his own weakness that killed him." He left abruptly then.

  Tess watched as the nurse covered Marsh. The open-eyed contorted face with its gaping mouth mirrored the convulsive final moments of death. She gave a small cry and turned, almost running in her haste to get out of the hospital, away from her own guilt.

  «^»

  Itwas dark and very late. Cold, yet oblivious to the wind, Tess stood on the hospital steps, staring past the gas lamps into the street. It was unlike Mick to be late. In fact, this was the first time she'd emerged from the hospital and not found the jaunty Irishman perched on the driver's box of his carriage and eager to see her home safely.

  At last Mick Kennedy came into view, skillfully managing his team and halting them only inches from the curb. Mick had taken it upon himself to be her protector. As he liked to say, he took the same care of her that he would have of his own daughter, if she'd lived, God rest her tiny soul. He worked hard for his living and had mentioned to Tess that he sent money home to his mother and father inCounty Cork,Ireland. Judging by the way he dressed, Tess thought, there was precious little left over after he paid his stable fees and rent. She'd grown rather fond of him, and she trusted him—no mean thing in a city the size ofChicago.

  Mick leapt down, and she let him put her into the carriage. "Don't take me right home," she told him in a subdued tone. "Drive me around the city for a few minutes first, if you don't mind."

  "Right-o, me lass. Bad night, eh? Sure, and I wouldn't want to work in no such place meself, all them sick folk. We'll drive a bit, then. Yes, we will. Wrap up in that robe, so ye'll not catch a chill."

  Mick shut the carriage door, and Tess pulled the bearskin robe around her. The gift of a grateful patron, the bearskin was "the pride of my hired carriage," Mick had told her. The thick black fur brought back memories for Tess of Montana winters, of accompanying her father in the buggy on his visits to the sick on the reservation. Just such a robe kept the winter chill from them.

  The sound of the steady clip-clop of the horses' shoes on the hard road comforting her, Tess closed her eyes and in that dark privacy let the tears come. Poor Marsh Bailey. He'd thought he needed only her…and everything in his life would be set right. The doctor swore that it was the opiate that killed him, but Tess knew better. Her rejection had brought on his anger and despair and caused him to take that fatal dose. Perhaps he wanted to punish her for being only a kind nurse and not a lover; perhaps he wanted only to escape his tragic and desperate situation. She would never know. Would she ever know why Matt could not love her the way she wanted—just as Marsh Baileydidnot know her heart and mind?

  She wiped at the hot tears on her cheeks with her gloved hand and felt as if her heart would crack. Nursing was no profession for the weak-willed or soft-natured, her father had told her many times. While doctors and nurses had to be compassionate, they also had to be in control of emotion at all times while maintaining a sense of separation from the patient. Otherwise, he'd said, one couldn't perform one's tasks. Imagine these poor, sick people depending on a weeping nurse, her father had chided her during an outbreak of diphtheria. She was weeping copiously over a dead infant when he said, "You have to toughen up, Tess, or you're no good to me." He hadn't hugged her or patted her or tried to comfort her in any other way. He'd been stern. "You don't stop caring—not ever. But you have to wall up your feelings so they don't interfere with your work. The practice of medicine requires a strong constitution and cool nerve. Now dry those tears and come here. I'm going to need you to hold this young man while I swab out his throat!"

  These memories of the lessons she'd learned from her father's words and actions helped restore her perspective. Little by little, Tess regained control of herself, so that by the time she finally told Mick to drive her home, she was almost back to her old self. Her red eyes and nose gave her away, of course.

  "Now you just go in there and get yourself a good night's sleep, me dear," Mick told her, tipping his hat. "In the morning, sure, everythin' will look bright and new again!"

  "Thanks, Mick," she said in a su
bdued tone.

  "A good evenin' to you!"

  He climbed back into the driver's seat and with a smile and a nod went his way.

  Tess slowly climbed the steps to the front door, and cried out softly when a shadow detached itself from the depths of the porch and confronted her.

  "It's about time," Matt said angrily. "Where the hell have you been? Didn't I tell you to come straight home? For God's sake, woman, must you put your life in danger just to spite me?"

  She caught the pungent scent of the cigar he'd been smoking, mingling with his cologne. He wasn't wearing a hat, and his jacket was unbuttoned. He looked furious in the dim light pouring out the long windows of the boardinghouse.

  "Ihad Mick drive me around a bit before I came home," she said quietly. "I had a long and difficult shift, Matt. Now I'm very tired, and I want to go to bed."

  He caught her arm in a steely grip as she started past him and held her so close that she could feel the heat of his body.

  "You were off duty at least an hour and a half ago," he continued relentlessly. "I want to know where you were."

  She tugged at his grip, but she couldn't move him. "I don't have to tell you anything!"

  "The hell you don't."

  He pulled her back into the shadows. His arms contracted, riveting her body to his in a contact that shocked her speechless. While she grappled with the implications of the embrace, his head bent and his hard mouth found hers unerringly in the darkness.

  Itwasn't at all how she'd thought her first kiss would feel. He wasn't gentle or particularly considerate. His lips hurt. His arm encircled her nape, so that the force of his hard mouth pushed her head back against the solid muscle of his upper arm. Her fingers plucked weakly at his sleeve while she stood, frozen against him. Even the pain was sweet after so many long years of dreaming about passionately kissing Matt.

  All at once, the pressure of his mouth eased. Then his lips lifted away from hers. She stared up into the darkness at the blurry outline of his face.

  His breath sounded strained and rough. She felt his free hand move and come to rest on her face, his fingers touching as if their tips might see her expression. His thumb caressed the contours of her lower lip. She was hypnotized. His thumb slipped to the crease between her lips, continuing its rhythmic stroking. She was breathless.

  She gasped as he gently pried her lips apart, his head dipped lower, and his mouth replaced his thumb with a gentle suction that set her heart pounding. His hand smoothed her cheek, her neck, lightly caressing the soft skin. When she sagged against him, soft and compliant, his mouth became more insistent, tenderly exploring, coaxing, provoking.

  Something very strange was happening, Tess realized. She was entranced. Her knees felt too weak to support her. Her small hand clung high on his sleeve. She felt him shift her so that she was lifted even closer to him, her arm going naturally around his neck.

  He moved just enough to find the support of the porch rail. He leaned against it, adjusting Tess's body until she was suddenly between his legs in an intimacy that shocked her with its newness.

  She moaned, afraid of these hot, drugging sensations that were being born in her. Matt's mouth was making her senseless. She couldn't bear the thought of letting it part from hers, so when he began to lift his head, she followed his mouth, her body trembling as she stretched it against his.

  She needed…something. Something more. Her arms tightened around his neck, and she moaned again, a little sob of noise that seemed to cause an explosion of feeling in Matt. His arms contracted bruisingly and his mouth opened. She felt his tongue probing inside her lips, and she let him invade that warm darkness, more demanding now. She was shaking all over as if with a fever. She shuddered with the force of these new feelings, and involuntarily she moved her body against Matt's in an instinct that brought a similar movement from him.

  One of his arms still held her securely while his hard mouth devoured hers, but the free hand was against her side, under her jacket. It moved up and up and she stiffened, though not with fear. She gasped and twisted her body so that his searching fingers could find what they were seeking: the soft, exquisite smoothness of her breast under the jacket, under the blouse, right above her corset in its brief muslin cover…

  Footsteps inside the house forced them to spring apart. Matt pulled her farther into the shadows. Two residents walked past the glass-paned front door into the parlor.

  Matt was holding Tess against him, struggling to slow his breathing. She was all but collapsed in his arms, her body softly trembling with the newness of passion.

  Hishand pressed her cheek against his shirt beneath his open jacket. She could feel the beating of his heart.

  His fingers smoothed against her cheek, her throat. It took all his remaining control to keep from letting them slide back to the softness of her breast.

  She was overexcited. And she was confused. She felt wonderful. She felt strange, as though a different woman inhabited her body. Tears coursed down her cheeks. Suddenly all her profound new feelings of wonder and surprise and embarrassment coalesced into a violent sensation of shame. She'd encouraged Matt, provoked Matt, led him to these intimacies that he detested…at leastwithher. She tried to stifle a sob, but failed.

  Hishandpressed her face closer to his chest. "Shhh," he whispered. "Don't cry."

  "I'm so ashamed," she muttered.

  Hislips touched her eyelids. "Stop listening to your Victorian upbringing. You're a modern woman. Haven't you told me so a dozen times?"

  "Not modern enough." She sniffed.

  He chuckled deep in his throat. "Coward," he taunted softly. "Are you really naive enough to believe that good girls and boys don't do this?"

  She stiffened a little. "They don't. And I'm not. Good, that is."

  "They do, and you are," he countered. "We both lost control. It's nothing to cry about."

  "Iled you… Iencouraged you—" She stopped, too embarrassed to finish the sentence.

  "Yes, I know," he mused wickedly. "I'll strut for a week."

  She shivered. "It was wrong!"

  "It doesn't feel wrong," he replied. His hand smoothed her disheveled hair, and he noticed that somewhere in the tempestuous heat of the past few minutes, her hat had been dislodged, pins and all. "We'll find your hat in a minute," he said, "when my legs stop trembling."

  "Oh, are they?" she asked impulsively. "So are mine."

  He laughed again, his misgivings gone in the delight of the moment. "Tess, have you never felt a man's mouth before?"

  "Well, no," she confessed. "And certainly not…not like that!"

  Her embarrassment made him feel protective. "Like what?"

  She hid her face against his chest. "You know."

  His hand soothed her nape. His lips brushed her temple. "Oh, for the wild, free days," he whispered huskily, "when we could have lain together in the tall grass by the river and learned each other by touch and taste with no household of strangers to barge in on us!"

  She found a glimmer of humor in the frustration in his voice and laughed. "Snakes would have slithered over us, and we'd have been eaten alive by mosquitoes."

  He chuckled, too. "I suppose so." He touched her earlobe. "Feel less shaky now?"

  "A little."

  He released her, bending to pick up her hat. "I can't see the pins in the dark. How many had you?"

  "Only one, with a pearl on the end. Oh, dear, Father gave it to me for my birthday last year. I hope it isn't lost."

  He was still feeling around the floor. "Aha."

  He produced it and placed it in her hand, along with the hat. "You'd better try and get that back on, or we'll become the focus of some lively gossip when we go inside."

  She felt for her bun, and then placed the hat, spearing through it with the hatpin. "I'll bet I look flushed."

  "I should hope so," he said haughtily.

  She hit at his sleeve. "Masher."

  "Good God, you're delicious to make love to," he said in spite of
himself.

  "Never do that again," she said primly. "You aren't going to lead me into a life of sin."

  "I wouldn't dream of it," he said with mock solemnity.

  She moved into the light, nervous about how she must look. She turned. "How bad?" she asked worriedly.

  He moved closer. He was as grim and severe as always, except for his eyes. "You've been crying," he said suddenly. "And before I ever touched you. Why?"

  She sighed raggedly. "Because Marsh Bailey committed suicide today."

  "Tess!"

  "He had a bottle of opium. The doctor said it was an overdose, that he was an addict and his amputation would leave him unable to afford his habit." She wiped at another tear with the handkerchief crumpled and stuffed in her skirt pocket. "Oh, bother, I can't help feeling that I helped bring it about, Matt. I let him depend on me…and he came to think he loved me…and asked me to marry him. This very afternoon, he asked. And I turned him down, of course. I don't really feel it was my fault exactly, Matt, but oh—"