The Savage Heart (4 page)

“Matt!”

“Don't look so outraged. I've heard members of the women's rights groups say such things. Like the mythical Amazons, they feel that men are good for only one purpose, and that marriage is the first step to feminine slavery.”

“It is,” she said vehemently. “Look around you. Most married women have a child a year. They're considered loose if they work outside the home. They must bend to the husband's will without thought of their own comfort or safety. There is nothing to stop a man from beating his wife and children, from gambling away all they own, from drinking from dawn till dusk…. Oh, Matt, can't you see the terror of this from a woman's point of view, even a little?”

“Of course I can,” he replied honestly. “But you speak of exceptions, not the rule. Remember, Tess, change is a slow thing in a large society.”

“It won't happen by itself.”

“I agree. But I also feel that it can't be forced in any drastic fashion. Such as,” he continued coldly, “taking children away from their parents on the reservations and sending them away to government schools, making it illegal for
them to speak their own language—” he paused, smiling now “—even making it illegal to wear their hair long.”

Her hands itched to touch his hair, as she had only once, in the early days of their relationship, when he was teaching her the bow. She searched his dark eyes, a question in her own. “Do you miss the old days?”

He laughed shortly and let her go. “How can I miss something so primitive? Can you really see me in buckskins speaking pidgin English?”

She shook her head. “No, not you,” she said. “You'd be in a warbonnet, painted, on horseback, a bow in hand.”

He averted his head. “I'll be late. I have to go.”

“Matt, for heaven's sake, you aren't ashamed of your heritage?”

“Good night, Tess. Don't go out alone. It's dangerous.”

He strode away without a single look over his shoulder. Tess stood and watched him for a moment, shivering in the cold wind. He was ashamed of being Sioux. She hadn't realized the depth of it until tonight. Perhaps that explained why he rarely went home to South Dakota, why he didn't speak of his cousins there, why he dressed so deliberately as a rich white man. He hadn't cut his hair, though, so he might retain a vestige of pride in his background, even if he kept it hidden. She shook her head. So many of his people had been unable to do what he had, to resign themselves to living like whites, and the policies forbidding them their most sacred ceremonies and the comfort of their shamans were slowly killing their souls. It must have been easier for Matt to live in Chicago and
fan the fires of gossip about his true background, than to go to the reservation and deal with it.

She recalled the way soldiers and other white men had spoken to him when he lived with her and her father, and she bristled now as she had then at the blows to his enormous pride. Prejudice ran rampant these days. Nativism, they called it. Nobody wanted “foreigners” in this country, to hear white people talk. Tess's lip curled. The very thought of calling a
native
American a
foreigner
made her furious. Out west, one still could hear discussion about eradicating the small remnant of the Indian people by taking away all their remaining lands and forcefully absorbing them into white society, absorbing them and wiping out their own culture in the process.

Did no one realize that it was one hairbreadth from genocide? It turned Tess's stomach. She'd always felt that the government's approach to assimilating the Indians was responsible for the high rates of alcoholism, suicide and infant mortality on the reservations.

She turned away from the cold wind and went inside the boardinghouse, her mind ablaze with indignation for Indians and women. Both were downtrodden by white men, both forbidden the vote.

The two old ladies who lived upstairs, Miss Barkley and Miss Dean, gave her a cold stare as she tried to pass quickly by the open door to the parlor where they sat.

“Decent young ladies should not stand in the street with men,” Miss Dean said icily. “Nor should they attend radical meetings or work in hospitals.”

“Someone must tend the sick,” Tess said. “I daresay it might do you both good to come to one of our meetings and hear what your sisters in life are bearing because society refuses to accept women as equals!”

Miss Barkley went pale. “Miss…Meredith,” she gasped, a hand at her throat, “I do not consider myself the equal of a man, nor should I want to!”

“Filthy, sweating brutes,” Miss Dean agreed. “They should all be shot.”

Tess grinned. “There, you see, Miss Dean, you and I have much in common! You simply must come to a meeting with me.”

“Among those radicals?” asked Miss Dean, scandalized.

“They aren't,” Tess returned. “They're honest, hardworking girls who want to live life as full citizens of this country. We are a new type of woman. We will never settle back and accept second-class citizenship.”

Miss Barkley was red in the face. “Well, I never!”

Miss Dean held up a hand. “A moment, Clara,” she told her companion. “Miss Meredith presents some interesting arguments. These meetings are open to anyone?”

“Certainly,” Tess said. “You may go with me next Tuesday, if you like, and see what they are about.”

“Ida, don't you dare!” Miss Barkley fumed.

“I should have gone, were I twenty years younger,” came the reply, and a smile. “But I am too old and set in my ways, Miss Meredith.”

“Tess,” she corrected.

The older woman's eyes twinkled. “Tess, then. I hope
you achieve your goals. My generation will not live to see it, but perhaps yours will eventually gain the vote.”

Tess went to her own room, happily having diverted them from any discussion of her surprising interaction with Matt. It wouldn't do to have people in the boardinghouse speculate about the two of them. She refused to do any speculating on her own, either. She buried Matt's odd behavior in the back of her mind and got ready for bed.

Outside the wind was blowing fiercely; snowflakes struck the windowpane. She closed her eyes, hoping for a heavy snowfall. She always felt curiously happy, often content, too, on snowy days.

Saturday's march was lively. It was held after dark with torches to light the path of the marchers. More than four hundred women showed up, carrying placards. Tess marched between two women she knew vaguely, but she missed the company of her friend Nan.

“Isn't this exciting?” the girl beside her asked. “We're bound to win with such large numbers of us demanding the vote now.”

Tess agreed, but less wholeheartedly. She'd learned one terrible truth in her young life, and that was the bullheadedness of government in the face of demands for change. Regardless of how just the cause, the people in power in Washington were avid in supporting the status quo. Roosevelt was keen on creating a safe place for wildlife and showing pride in the American spirit. But he was also a believer in Manifest Destiny, and a manly man. Tess
wondered if he shared the same attitude toward women that most men of his generation harbored—that women were created only to keep house and bear children and look after men.

Demonstrations inevitably attracted spectators; Tess glanced around at them. A man waving a flag that read Up With Labor stepped from the street into the ranks of the women, bringing a small body of cohorts with him.

“This is not your group!” one woman yelled at him.

“This struggle is also the workers' struggle!” the man yelled back, and kept marching. “We support your cause! Down with oppression of all kinds!”

“You see?” one of Tess's companions grumbled. “We cannot even hold a rally without having a man step in and try to lead it. Well, I'll just show him a thing or two!”

The small, matronly woman turned in the throng with her placard held like a club and beaned the advocate for laborers with it right on his bald spot.

He yelped and dropped the banner, and the few men and women who were in his group started attacking the women's rights marchers.

Tess stood very still and gave a long sigh as she heard the first of many police whistles start to sound. The authorities had looked for a way to break up this march, and the communist had given it to them. The small scuffle became a melee.

As she tried to move back from the combatants, Tess was aware of a newcomer who didn't seem to be part of either group. He was tall and young, expensively dressed,
and he carried a cane. He seemed to be looking straight at her. While she was wondering about the odd incident, she was suddenly knocked down and all but trampled as the fighting accelerated.

She never lost consciousness, but she heard a metallic sound through the commotion of loud voices. She rolled to avoid being stepped on, and as she did, her arm was hit a mighty blow. It throbbed, and even though the light was dim, she could see that the sleeve of her jacket and blouse seemed to be ripped through.

Two policemen were on either side of her when she looked up again. One of them, kindly and older, assisted her to the sidewalk. Muttering about people who couldn't live and let live, he left her on the stoop of an apartment house. Two small boys played with a hoop and gave her curious stares.

She wished that she could open her blouse and look at her arm because it felt wet as well as bruised under her torn jacket, but to do something so indecent in public would start another riot. She wondered how she was going to find the carriage and driver Matt had insisted on hiring to take her to and from the hospital and her suffragist meetings as soon as she'd received the nursing position and found the group of women she wanted to join. Her driver, Mick Kennedy, was a prince of a fellow, and she'd asked him to wait a number of blocks away from the demonstration for her. Now the streets were in such an uproar and she was feeling so very disoriented that she wasn't sure precisely where he was or how to find him.

As luck would have it, Mick Kennedy found her. Worried by what he'd seen on the fringes of the demonstration, he'd hitched his team to a streetlamp, plunged into the crowd, and spent the last fifteen minutes or so searching for her. He was visibly relieved to find her.

“Hurt in all this, were you?” At her nod, he added, “Some mess, I'll say. Shall I get you back to your boardinghouse?”

“Oh, yes, thank you, Mick.”

“Well, now, just take me arm and I'll have you back there in no time, or me name's not Mick Kennedy!”

In short order they were out of the crowd, and Mick was helping Tess into the carriage. His fine team was swiftly under way, drawing the impressive black carriage through the thinning crowd.

By the time they reached the boardinghouse, Tess's arm was much worse.

“Shall I help you up to your door, ma'am?” Mick offered.

“No, thank you. I can manage.” She smiled, then made her way slowly up the steps.

Mrs. Mulhaney met her at the door. At the sight of Tess, dirty and disheveled, her hat askew and her hair coming down, she exclaimed, “Why, Miss Meredith, whatever has happened?”

“A man from the workers' party infiltrated our ranks and provoked one of our number to violence.” Tess groaned. She leaned against the wall, wincing and nauseated, as she
regarded the staircase with uneasy eyes and wondered how she was going to get to her room.

“Is my cousin Matt in this evening?” she asked suddenly.

“Why, I'm sure he is. I haven't seen him go out. You wait here, my dear. I'll fetch him!”

Mrs. Mulhaney rushed upstairs and quickly came back down with Matt, who was shrugging into a jacket as he walked. He eyed Tess with an expression she was too wounded to contemplate.

“Are you hurt? Where?” he asked immediately.

“My arm,” she said, breathing unsteadily. “I was trodden on, and I think it may be cut, as my sleeve is.”

“Can you send for Dr. Barrows?” he asked Mrs. Mulhaney.

“I can—and shall. At once. Can you take Miss Meredith to her room?”

“Yes.”

Without another word, Matt swung Tess up in his arms and climbed the staircase as easily as if he were carrying feathers.

She clung to his neck, savoring his great strength as he covered the distance to her door.

“Who did this?” he asked under his breath.

“There was a riot,” she explained. “I don't know who did it. Several people were fighting, and I seem to have got in the way. My arm throbs so!”

“Which one?”

“The left one, just above the elbow. I didn't even see how it happened. I rolled away from a very heavy man
who was about to step on me. I remember a man with a cane looking at me before I fell, just before something stabbed at my arm. I think it might have been his cane. I wish I'd bitten his ankle.”

The mental picture of Tess with her teeth in a man's ankle amused Matt and he chuckled softly.

“Here, open the door for me, can you?” he asked, lowering her.

She turned the crystal knob with her good hand and pushed the door open, trying not to notice the faint scent of his cologne and the warm sigh of his breath close to her lips. Matt shouldered into the room and carried her to her bed. He put her down very gently on the quilt that covered the white-enameled iron bedstead.

Wary of Mrs. Mulhaney's return, he closed the door and then matter-of-factly began taking off Tess's jacket.

She was panting, but not from the pain. “Matt, you…mustn't!” She feverishly tried to stay the lean, strong hands that were unfastening her blouse.

His black eyes met hers with a faint twinkle. “Feeling prudish, Tess? You saw as much if not more of me after I was shot at Wounded Knee.”

“I was fourteen then,” she said, aware even as she spoke that it was a nonsensical answer. “And you mustn't handle me…like this.”

“Where are all those slogans you were spouting about a woman's rights?” He glanced down again at the buttons. “Don't your more radical sisters even advocate free love?”

“I am not…that radical! Will you please stop undressing me?”

He didn't even slow down. “With the best of luck, it will take the doctor a little time to get here,” he said as he worked buttons through the dainty holes. “I smell the blood.”

She started, having forgotten about Matt's remarkable sensory powers, honed from childhood. If he'd ever been a child. Sioux males trained to be warriors from a very early age, learning the knife and bow and horsemanship as young boys, and getting a taste of battle by accompanying war parties as water carriers.

“Matt…” she protested, both hands going to the buttons to stop him.

He brushed her fumbling fingers aside. “I never imagined you to be such a prim woman,” he chided. “You and I know more about each other than many husbands and wives do.”

That was true. Intimacy had been forced into their relationship because she nursed him so long after his devastating wounds. Not that her father hadn't had many qualms. It violated his sense of morality and decorum, but he had been unable to withstand her tearful pleas to be allowed to help.

“But this is…different,” she tried to explain.

His hands stilled for an instant while he looked into her eyes and saw the shyness there.

“I would do the same for anyone,” he said evenly.

She bit her lower lip.

He moved her hands aside very gently. “No one will ever know,” he said softly. “Does that reassure you?”

It was odd that she trusted him so much. The thought of any other man's hands on her was sickening. But not Matt's. They were immaculate hands, always clean and neat and so very strong, yet gentle.

The problem was that her heart reacted violently to the touch of those hands on her bare skin over her collarbone. She ached for him to do more than unbutton her clothing, though she couldn't imagine what that “more” might be.

He pretended not to notice, and unbuttoned the last of the buttons on her blouse. Visible beneath it was a whale-bone corset and, above that, a lace-decorated muslin chemise. At the sight of the dark points of her nipples through the muslin Matt's hands stilled. A faint glitter claimed his dark eyes for an instant.

“You mustn't stare at me like that,” she whispered.

His eyes lifted to hers. “Why not?”

She wondered that herself. While she was struggling for a rational reason, his eyes went back to her bodice and seemed bent on memorizing how she looked.

“Oh, this is very unconventional,” she protested weakly.

“And wickedly pleasurable,” he murmured. His hand slid from the buttons of her blouse to the edge of the muslin and she jumped as if his lean fingers burned her soft skin.

“You rake!” she gasped, catching his hand.

“All right.” He chuckled, letting her move his curious
fingers back to the task at hand. “If I had any lingering doubts about your modern ideas, they're gone now.”

“What do you mean?” she asked indignantly.

“All that talk about free love and liberated morals,” he chided. “You're a fraud.”

She glowered, but she didn't deny it. He lifted her and moved her arm gently to free it from the long sleeve of her blouse. It hurt dreadfully.

He whispered to her in Sioux, a tender command to be still. Once the arm was free, leaving her only in the sleeveless muslin chemise, he turned her arm gently so that he could see the wound. It was a long, deep cut on her upper arm, made not by a cane, but almost certainly by a sword. A sword concealed in a cane? Whoever had wielded it had meant to do damage, perhaps even more damage than he'd accomplished with this wound.

“This is deep,” he said angrily. The rent in her otherwise perfect white skin was sluggishly discharging blood. He took a cloth from the washstand, applied pressure, making her wince, and held it until the bleeding began to stop.

“I wish I knew who did it,” she muttered.

“No more than I do.” He held her hand above the cloth he'd placed over the wound and left her long enough to fetch a basin of water and soap and a fresh cloth. He bathed the wound gently, watching her posture go rigid as he performed the necessary chore. He put the basin aside to fetch a bottle of rubbing alcohol and some cotton flannel. “This is going to hurt like hell,” he told her.

She held her arm steady and looked at him with her teeth locked, then nodded.

The sting was almost unbearable. She made a sharp little cry and bit her lip as he flooded the wound with the alcohol.

“Sorry,” she said at once, pale but game. “That was shameful, to cry out like that.”

“Considering the pain, it was hardly shameful,” he said honestly. He covered the wound with another piece of clean flannel and went to fetch her lacy robe from the clothes closet. Gently, he enfolded her in it.

“No, Matt, it's the only one I have! The blood will stain it!”

“Robes are easily replaced,” he said indifferently. “Put it on.”

And without argument she did so, docile, he supposed, because of the pain. He drew the front edges together, his knuckles just barely brushing the curve of her breasts above the chemise, and she gasped at the contact.

He hesitated, searching her eyes. Under his hands, he could feel the frantic whip of her heart; he could see the erratic beat of the pulse in her neck. Her lips parted and everything she felt was suddenly visible. A scarlet flush ran from her cheeks down her white throat to the silky white skin of her throat and shoulders and breasts.

Something was happening to her. She felt her breasts draw, as if they'd gone cold. Inside her, there was a burst of warmth, a throbbing that made her feel tight all over. Matt's hands contracted on the lace of the robe, and if she
wasn't badly mistaken, they moved closer to her skin, the warm knuckles blatantly pressing into the soft flesh.

His eyes were on a level with hers, and her heart raced even faster as she saw the heat in them. They were a liquid black, steady and turbulent, unblinking on her rapt face. For seconds that dragged into minutes, they simply looked at each other in hot silence.

Just as his hands moved again, just as she felt the chemise give under their insistent but almost imperceptible downward pressure, footsteps on the staircase sounded like thunder, breaking the spell.