Cactus Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (46 page)

      
“I’ll just bet you do! She's a real blueblood, too honorable to die; but what does that make my brother? He was expendable, I suppose, just a Missouri nobody without a family tree, without honor!” She was screaming now, and Jim was reacting to her temper as he always did.

      
“Your brother was a skulking blackmailer,” he shot back furiously, goaded into a corner because he could not explain to her what he must do. The minute the words escaped his lips he wanted to call them back. She stood stunned for a moment, then hauled back and struck him across his face with all the strength her tiny hand possessed.

      
“You arrogant, priggish bastard! If you're so worried about pure bloodlines, you sure can't get yourself involved with trash like me and my family, can you!” She braced her hands on her hips. “Get out of my house.” Her voice was ice-cold now.

      
“Charlee, wait.” He struggled to calm his own raging temper before he did something he knew he'd regret. “I didn't mean it that way. I don't give a damn about your brother and what he did, only about you!”

      
“It's quite obvious you don't care about Richard Lee's murder, so you can't care about me. Please leave.” She was proud of the control in her voice, now that she had regained her composure, at least superficially.

      
He looked into her glacial green eyes for a full moment. It seemed like an eternity; then he turned down the hall and walked out the front door. If the old folks sitting on the porch heard their shouting match, Slade was too preoccupied to notice. He leaped to Polvo's back and kicked the big buckskin into a hard gallop, churning up the thick dust in floury clouds.

      
Jim rode for several hours, until darkness finally forced him to return to town. He mulled the whole messy situation over and over in his mind, confused, angry, and wounded. “I was damn well rid of Sina, now I'm damn well rid of Charlee McAllister,” he muttered to Polvo as he dismounted in front of the Carver town house, thinking for the hundredth time in the past months how he preferred the simple, uncomplicated relationship he had shared with Rosalie Parker. On sudden impulse, he swung back into the saddle and took off for the edge of town. There was a small house on a quiet back street where he knew the women were significantly more accommodating than Charlee McAllister.

* * * *

      
The object of Slade's ire spent a miserable night, pitching and rolling, until Hellfire hopped from the bed in disgust. He jumped on the windowsill and fixed his baleful gaze on the starry night sky.

      
“Even you desert me, huh,” she snorted at the cat, who responded with a couple of jerky tics of his tail and the raising of one fringed ear. He did not deign to look at Charlee until she spoke again. “I know what you're thinking, you tomcat. All you males stick together. I do not need Jim Slade to have a good night's sleep!” With that she swore spitefully again and rolled over with a resounding thunk. The cat only looked at her turned back through slitted eyes, which seemed to say, “And I do not like butter or catfish, either...”

      
After a thoroughly miserable week, during which she worked herself into exhaustion each day in an unsuccessful attempt to forget Jim's perfidy, Charlee went to Bainbridge's Mercantile with Chester to purchase what supplies were available since the Mexican Army had left. She had just jumped from the wagon seat in front of the store when she saw Hannah Wilcox's spoiled young daughter walk out the door. Suzannah's big brown eyes narrowed in jealousy as she watched Charlee's hair turn to bronze fire in the morning sun.

      
Forcing a smile, she said, “Fancy seeing you out and about so early, Miss McAllister. What with your new business to run and all, I scarcely expect you have much time for anything but laundry and dishes.”

      
Her catty, singsong voice grated on Charlee's ears, but she nodded, trying to be marginally polite.

      
Suzannah seized the opportunity to catch her old rival's arm as Charlee began to walk through the doorway into the store. “I just had the nicest chat with Paul, and he told me the naughtiest tidbit. If you're going to take Deborah Ken—I mean Fleming's place as a respectable member of our church group, I feel it my Christian obligation to tell you about that dreadful man you used to work for.”

      
Charlee's eyes flashed but she said levelly, “I'm already aware he's been staying with Mrs. Carver at her house, Suzannah, but even a frightful satyr like Jim Slade could hardly commit an impropriety with a woman who's been critically shot. Now, if you'll excuse me—”

      
“Oh, I meant besides that rather gauche display. At least they are engaged, and it is his duty to care for her, I suppose. Oh no, it's his going to that place at the end of Soledad Street that Paul was so shocked at. You know, the place where those awful painted women ply their trade. He's been seen there every night! Why Paul says—”

      
Charlee cut in, “I can just imagine what Paul says! But tell me, Suzannah, if Paul doesn't visit those painted women himself, how did he happen to run into Jim Slade in the establishment—every night?”

      
All the buxom brunette could do at that point was roll her eyes and gasp, rather like a banked carp.

      
If Charlee appeared cool and composed when she faced the knowing, hateful smile of Paul Bainbridge in the store, she was aching inwardly. She quickly placed her order with the owner's son and then left Chester to load the wagon while she walked swiftly back to the boardinghouse.

* * * *

      
Edith LeBeau looked at the lean, golden body of Jim Slade, asleep across her bed. “Make that passed out, not asleep,” she amended beneath her breath. Sighing, she walked back to the bed from her position by the window. She had been watching the sunrise, hardly an ordinary occupational practice for a prostitute, but Edith did not consider herself ordinary at all. In the two brief months since she had arrived in San Antonio, Edith had become the highest-priced whore in the city, the favorite of all the wealthiest and most discriminating men. One or two had offered to set her up as a discreetly kept mistress. While she mulled that over, she had examined the rest of the potential customers in town.

      
Edith knew Jim Slade on sight; rich and handsome were marvelously compatible qualities, she had always thought. The gossip about his two-year liaison with a Houston City harlot whom he had kept at his fancy ranch house was still circulating months after Rosalie Parker's departure. He was a bachelor who could do as he pleased. Obviously, he didn't give a damn if the whole city was scandalized or not. However, since he had not been a customer at her place of employment, she abandoned the idea of becoming Rosalie's successor, until a week ago, when Jim Slade had walked in the door and run an appraising glance over her sultry French beauty.

      
Edith was vain about her glossy raven hair and voluptuous body with its creamy white skin. One scorching look from her sloe eyes, a smile from her tantalizing carmine lips, and she was sure she had him hooked. If he seemed a trifle hurried and impatient, not fully appreciative of her coy games and artful poses, he was still a strikingly attractive man who had used her gently, if rather perfunctorily. As a professional whore since the age of fourteen, Edith expected no return of sexual satisfaction from her customers; but she did enjoy their appreciation of her superior style and beauty. When Slade had ignored the fact that he had paid for the best, his indifference had challenged her. She would take that Parker woman's place at Bluebonnet if it was the last thing she did. Both his Mexican fiancée and that Yankee girl she'd heard rumors about could cool their heels in town. Edith planned to be sitting pretty—in Jim Slade's bed.

      
But in the past week, although Slade had visited the bordello three times, he had not asked for her specifically. It had nearly cost her a terrible fight with Marge Waller to get him on his second visit. Last night, he had entered the bar downstairs, grabbing her with one hand and a bottle of brandy with the other. Upstairs, he had taken her quickly, with no preliminaries. Then he proceeded to get filthy drunk. Things were not going according to plan.

      
Slade awoke to the smell of heavy perfume, not exactly cheap, but musky and far too generously applied. His head ached abominably, and his tongue was so thick and dry that his throat seemed closed off. Just as well, since his stomach began to make its roiling protest known when he rolled over.

      
“
Bonjour, chéri
. Did you sleep well?” Edith forced a tone of brightness that she did not feel. Perhaps he was upset over a woman and needed a shoulder to cry upon. That sometimes worked. “I will bring coffee and we can talk,
oui
?”

      
While she bustled off, black silk robe swishing, Slade swung his long legs over the edge of the bed and sat with his head in his hands, held like fragile crystal. His skull felt as though it would shatter from the agonizing noise of her rustling departure.

      
“Why the hell do I keep coming back here? It isn't working,” he said aloud to the garish red wallpaper. He had hoped the exotic and practiced-looking Frenchwoman would blot Charlee's wholesome innocence from his mind. Nothing could have missed the mark any wider. The more he brooded and drank, and the more times he performed—badly, he admitted—in Edith's bed, the more he was forced to confront the hold that Missouri hoyden had on him. Facing it was one thing, liking it quite another.

      
If only Kennedy would show up so that he could write the ending to this whole miserable chapter in his life, things would be less complicated. First, he should get shut of this scheming little tart, Edith. She was as unlike Rosie as Sina was unlike Charlee.
Charlee
. He cursed and got up, wobbling to an overstuffed chair, where he found his pants lying in a wrinkled heap. The day was off to a great start.

* * * *

      
When Asa arrived at the boardinghouse that same morning, he found Charlee still feeling wounded and brooding over Slade's newest betrayal at the bordello on Soledad Street. Of course, she did not confide the exact reason for her depression to the old foreman, but he knew she grieved for Jim. He also knew that until Tomasina Carver's fate was decided, there was nothing to be done about the situation, so he tried another tack. He and Weevils would take Charlee on a picnic to cheer her up. At least it would distract her from the rocky road of love.

      
The following hour Weevils stood in the boarding-house kitchen with the picnic basket while Sadie put some additional items into the burgeoning larder.

      
“If n yew take radish root 'n polk greens 'n soak 'em in a quart o' bourbon whiskey, yew'll have yew th' cure fer thet rummytism,” the fat old cook remonstrated to Sadie, who cherished the belief that her copper bracelet was the best way to ward off the crippling affliction.

      
She snorted, “If ‘n I throws away th' roots 'n greens 'n jes' drinks th' whiskey, I won't feel me no achin' in my joints, ner no place elst, neither!”

      
While they argued, a bemused Charlee changed clothes for the impromptu outing, and Asa saddled Patchwork and brought her from the livery stable. While he was leaving the stable, another figure was just arriving.

      
William Kennedy tossed the reins of a well-winded mount to the stable hand, indicating that he would be gone for about an hour. When he returned, he would require a fresh horse. He walked briskly to the Carver townhouse and announced himself to the maid, asking in fluent Spanish to see Jim Slade. When she informed him that Señor Slade was not there, he calculated a moment, then requested to see the lady of the house.

      
Tomasina was able to walk about with care. When Jim had visited her room the previous afternoon she had pretended to be far more frail than she was. But he had checked on her progress with the physician and knew better. All her best cards had been played, and she was decidedly down on points in this game. If only she had some means of escape.

      
Providentially, William Kennedy was announced by the maid as Tomasina considered her plight. She dressed in an enticing gray silk peignoir and arranged her hair in artful dishabille before admitting him to her sickroom.

      
Smiling wanly up at him, she allowed him to kiss her fingertips in perfunctory politeness. His shrewd gray eyes were as unnerving as ever. “I have been gravely injured, Mr. Kennedy, and now find myself a prisoner in my own home. Our army has gone, leaving me to the uncertain mercies of the Texian rabble. I fear for my life if you cannot help me.” There, just the right touch of drama with tears and softly clinging hands that would not release their grip on his wrist.

      
“Save your theatricals for your fiancé, Mrs. Carver. He's the one to be your savior, not me. I’ve simply come for the gold. Where is it?” He pulled free of her grasp and skewered her with his icy eyes.

      
She felt a sudden rush of fury, but she suppressed it immediately, realizing that he must have some dispensation from the government to come here so openly and demand the gold. “The gold has been confiscated by the Texians, Mr. Kennedy.”

      
“I know that, Mrs. Carver,” he countered, noting the murderous look that she had quickly covered. Dangerous bitch.

      
“If you know they have it, why ever are you asking me about it then?” If he could walk off with the gold, he could easily take her with him, away from Texas and the threat of retribution here.