The Savage Heart (6 page)

Collier finished tallying the cost of the telegraph and told Matt. He handed the man a bank note and waited for him to make change. Collier botched it—a sure sign of nerves—and had to count out the change again.

He smiled wanly at Matt. “It will go off immediately, Mr. Davis.”

“Thank you,” Matt said. As he started to put the change in his pocket, he made sure that his jacket opened enough to give the man a look at the knife.

Collier's eyes widened like saucers.

Matt's chin lifted. His eyes narrowed. “Haven't you ever seen a bowie knife?” he asked coldly. “I find it much handier than a pistol in my line of work.”

The younger man couldn't seem to stop staring. “Ever use it on anybody?”

Matt's thin lips tugged up into a cool smile. “Yes.”

Collier averted his eyes. “Thank you for your business, sir.”

“Not at all. I like to patronize friends of my cousin.”

The man froze in place. “Friends?”

“Well, not you, of course, Collier,” he added pleasantly.
“But I believe your wife, Nan, is a friend of my cousin Tess.”

The man hesitated and then turned around. He was noticeably paler. “Yes. Nan knows her. They go to those accursed women's meetings together. You might as well know, I've discovered that Nan was sneaking out of the apartment on the two nights when I was at work, and I've forbidden her to attend any more meetings.” Brazenly, to Matt's ear, he added, “There was a riot Saturday night, and those women were right in the middle of it. Everybody was talking about it. I'm very thankful that Nan was home with me when it happened, and that I didn't let her out of my sight.”

It was a long speech, calculated, Matt thought, to make him believe that Collier had an alibi for the time when Tess was stabbed. Matt didn't buy it for a minute, but he wasn't in a position to challenge the other man yet.

“You're very lucky,” Matt agreed. His face went hard. “The same can't be said for the man who wounded Tess. I'll find him. And when I do, I'll skin him alive.”

Collier swallowed. “That wouldn't be legal.”

“What he did to Tess wasn't legal, either. Only a coward attacks a woman.”

Collier, visibly shaken now, said quickly, “I hope you'll convey my best wishes to your cousin. And Nan's best wishes, too, of course. I don't know your cousin, but I certainly wish her no harm.”

Matt said nothing. He merely stared. “I'll tell Tess that
she won't be seeing Nan at any more meetings. She'll be sorry, I'm sure.”

Collier shifted restlessly and his face was sullen. “Some women just use those meetings as an excuse to play around,” he muttered. “Damned women. Always scheming.”

Matt wasn't about to get into any argument on that score. But he was grateful for the insight into why Collier might have attacked Tess. He tipped his hat mockingly. “Good day, Mr. Collier.”

“Good day.”

Once out of the telegraph office and across the street, Matt looked at Collier. He wasn't sending the telegram. He was sitting at his desk with his head in his hands. He looked as if the world were sitting on him.

Good enough for him, Matt thought angrily. The damned coward, pretending that he knew nothing about Tess's attack. Odd, that last statement he'd made, about women using the meetings as an excuse to run around on their husbands. Could the young Mrs. Collier be duping Tess? Suppose she really was running around on her husband, and Collier thought that Tess was helping her? In fact, Tess had said that Nan was allowed to come to only one meeting a week, but Collier had said that she was sneaking out two additional nights.

It put a whole new complexion on the business. He'd have to look into the matter. Tess would be safe enough; Collier wouldn't dare risk arousing Matt's ire now that he knew he was up against a detective. But what about
Collier's wife? If he wouldn't hesitate to brutally attack a stranger, what might he do to a wife he suspected of philandering? He wondered if Collier beat his wife, and if Tess knew anything personal about her. He made up his mind to ask her about it that night.

 

T
ESS WAS SITTING PROPPED
up in bed in her lacy robe, which Mrs. Hayes had washed for her, with her hair tied back by a yellow ribbon. She looked very young, still pale and in some pain, but improving.

Her face lit up when he came into the room. “You're early tonight,” she commented.

“I gave myself the evening off,” he said, chuckling as he removed his hat and overcoat. “Let me put these in my room, and I'll be back.”

He returned a minute later, frowning when he noted the absence of Mrs. Hayes.

“She went home to make supper for her husband. He's a tugboat skipper,” she elaborated. “They move those big ships around when they come into port. He and two of his sons have their own business. They aren't rich, but they make a nice living.”

“Who's the detective around here?” he asked.

“I could learn to be one.”

“I don't doubt it for a minute. How do you feel?”

“Sore and mad,” she told him. “Have you found out who did it?”

“I have a lead,” he said evasively, and pulled up a chair. He'd left the door wide open for the sake of propriety.
He crossed his long legs. “Tess, has Mrs. Collier ever said anything to you about a man other than her husband?”

Tess eyed him warily. “Now, why on earth would you ask me such a question?”

“Indulge me. This is important.”

She sighed and sank back into the pillows. “I don't know if she's seeing anyone,” she confessed after a minute. “Once or twice she's darted into a meeting just as it ended. A couple of nights she didn't share the carriage home with me. I assumed that she'd come with someone else and was leaving with her, too.” She looked squarely into Matt's eyes. “If she's running around on her husband, I wouldn't blame her. He's a bully and a brute and I think he beats her. But I don't know for a fact that she's doing anything immoral.”

Steps sounded outside the room, and Mrs. Mulhaney stopped, looked in and smiled nervously.

“Oh, so you're visiting with your cousin, are you?” she asked Matt, pointedly noting the open door with approval. “Can I bring you anything, Miss Meredith?”

“Thank you, Mrs. Mulhaney, but Mrs. Hayes is coming back any second with some of her oyster stew. I've never had it before. It sounded quite interesting.”

“I forget that you used to live far inland,” Mrs. Mulhaney said. “What did your father do, dear?”

“He was a physician.”

Mrs. Mulhaney smiled. “Why, how nice!”

Matt stared at her, unblinking. She shifted, smiled again, and excused herself, walking quickly on down the hall.

Tess muffled a giggle. “Wicked man,” she taunted in a whisper. “What a chilling expression!”

He grinned at her. “I practice in the mirror twice daily.” He stood up. “I think she's trying to make the point that I shouldn't be in here alone with you.”

Her eyes sparkled mischievously. “You're my cousin, aren't you? Do tell why you shouldn't be alone with me.”

He actually moved close to the head of the bed, and, propping a long arm against the white iron rail, he leaned down to within inches of her face. “Because God only knows what a man might do with a helpless woman should she be left alone with him and at his mercy!” he whispered.

She chuckled. “How exciting!”

He touched the tip of her nose with his finger. “Excitement is the last thing you need, my girl. Close your eyes and rest until your companion returns. I have book work to do.”

“Thank you,” she said, momentarily solemn. “You must have been very firm with the doctor. He was quite thorough.”

“Why didn't you tell me that he hadn't stitched that arm properly?”

“I kept going in and out,” she replied. “I can't remember ever feeling quite so sick and helpless.”

His jaw tautened. “You won't be hurt again, I promise you,” he said curtly.

She looked up at him with soft, affectionate eyes. “You take very good care of me. It's strange for you, isn't it? Having someone depend on you even in a small way?”

“Yes, it is, since I've been alone so long.”

“And you like it. I know. I'll try not to let anything like this happen again. Normally I'm quite self-sufficient.”

Her face was wan and drawn. He knew the pain of wounds from his own experience. “Try to get some rest. If you need me, sing out.”

“I won't, but thanks.” Her eyes searched his face. “You're tired, aren't you? I'm sorry I've cost you so much sleep…”

His fingers pressed back the words, lingering against her soft, warm mouth. “I don't want gratitude.”

Her eyes lowered. His fingers made her lips tingle. She had to fight the urge to kiss them.

The already familiar sound of Mrs. Hayes's step on the staircase sent him away from the bed, so that he was standing by the door when the elderly woman appeared with a jar, bowl, spoon and napkin on a wooden tray. “Borrowed from the kitchen here,” she said with a grin. “Hello, Mr. Davis. Care for some of my oyster stew? I made it fresh this evening.”

“Thank you, but no. I've eaten. Sleep well, Tess.”

“You, too, Matt.”

He went out, and this time he closed the door. Tess enjoyed the stew and Mrs. Hayes's conversation, but she was beginning to worry about the attitude of Mrs. Mulhaney. The woman obviously didn't approve of Tess—or anything about her. The landlady seemed to be looking for an excuse to toss her out. It was enough to keep her awake most of the night. She didn't know how she'd cope if she had to live away from Matt. Their relationship was
so different that she tingled all over just thinking of the pleasure it gave her to be near Matt. She'd have to find some way to make friends with her disapproving landlady while there was still time.

By the end of the week, Tess was up and about and feeling almost as good as new. Except for a twinge now and again from the stitches, which were due to be taken out the following Wednesday, she felt very well indeed.

Matt took her to a nearby soda parlor on Saturday and bought her an ice cream sundae, which was served in a tulip glass with mounds of whipped cream and a cherry on top. It was the most magical concoction she'd ever seen, much less tasted, and Matt found himself enjoying her reaction to it. When she was excited about something, Tess looked young as a child.

He approved of her well-fitted black suit with its green trim, although he wasn't enamored of the huge wide-brimmed feather-covered hat that she wore with it. Women and their queer ideas of fashion, he thought.
Every time the wind blew, the hat shed feathers worse than a shot quail.

He stirred his own chocolate malt soda and smiled at Tess's uninhibited pleasure in the sundae.

She was glancing around her with evident curiosity, and something in the intentness of her action puzzled him.

“Why the gawking, Tess?”

She met his eyes with a start. “Oh, it was just something one of the girls at the meetings said,” she replied, laughing with faint embarrassment despite herself. “I don't know if I should tell you, especially in public.”

His dark eyebrows lifted and he smiled sweetly. “Go ahead. Be a devil.”

She leaned toward him, so that her lips were scant inches from his ear and she could smell the spicy shaving lotion he used. “They say that ice cream parlors, especially those run by foreigners, are dens of iniquity. The white slave trade operates out of their back rooms, and also in amusement parks and at skating rinks!”

He burst out laughing, and other people in the ice cream parlor looked over.

“Do stop,” she muttered, tapping him lightly on the sleeve. “People are staring at us.”

He leaned forward. “You forgot to mention railroad depots,” he whispered.

She sighed. “Well, what do I know? I spent most of my life in the wilderness—” she lowered her voice “—with uncivilized people!”

His black eyes twinkled. “Like me?”

She studied his handsome face. It was hard to forget the Raven Following of her very young womanhood, wearing a trailing warbonnet—a visual statement of his bravery because each feather stood for an act of courage—and his face painted with his own mystical symbolism, like his war pony.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I was remembering,” she corrected softly. “And you probably wouldn't like knowing what I was remembering, so you shouldn't ask.”

He took a sip of his soda and then stirred it absent-mindedly with a long spoon. “It was a long time ago, wasn't it?” he murmured, and he looked up, catching her eyes. “We were different people then.”

“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. Chicago is 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. “I most 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 arm. “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 in Atlanta, working on a case for a friend.

“Have you ever met Nan'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 friend Nan? 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 friend Nan'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.”

“I beg 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 at it and 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. Knowledge
is
freedom, Tess.”

“I should have been furious if you had withheld all this. I'm not afraid of hard facts.”

“I know.”

She looked up at him from under the rim 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 for Chicago?” she asked haughtily. “You had cousins at Lame Deer who also left South Dakota after the massacre. I became well acquainted with some of them.”

“Did your father know?”

“Of course.”

“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 about Nan?”

“What do you mean?”

“Will he hurt her? I mean, if he was willing to stab me…even kill me, shouldn't we fear for Nan? 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, Nan swore 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.”