“Explain it to me.”
She took his empty glass from his hand, refilled it, and then drank from it. “People have such odd ideas about opera singers. They think we’re not quite human, as though we are creatures closer to divinity than to flesh and blood. They think just as you did, that we were born singing and that it has all been easy for us. They don’t see that we are human and that we want the same things that all women want.”
He caught her wrist, pulling her close to him. “And what do you want, Maddie? To be a saloon singer who swells out of the top of a too-small corset?”
“No, I want what I have, but tonight it was…I don’t know, it was nice to be liked for my womanly characteristics and not just for my voice.”
“But your voice—”
She pulled away from him. “I know that my voice is magnificent. I wanted to know that the men like my…I wanted to know that they liked me as a woman also. And they did.”
“How could you possibly doubt that?” he asked softly.
She turned and looked at him, and for a moment she was again Carmen, the lusty cigarette girl who knew that she had power over men. She wanted him to take her in his arms, to kiss her, possibly to make love to her.
“Save your seductions for your miners,” he said, and turned away.
Maddie felt as though she’d been kicked in the stomach, and it took a moment to recover her breath. She walked to the cot. “I don’t want you here tonight, Captain. If you feel that I’m not safe, then send Toby or Frank or Sam to stay with me.”
“After the display you made tonight, I wouldn’t trust my own father alone in here with you. My own grandfather.”
“But I’m perfectly safe with you, aren’t I, Captain?” To her horror, she could feel tears beginning to form in her eyes. Tonight, as she had been singing about the army officer that Carmen had loved, she knew she had been singing to this army officer who was beginning to fill her thoughts.
“I would protect you with my life, but you have to trust me.”
“I trust you with my life, but—” She broke off, the emotion of the night too much for her. “Leave me for a while, please.”
He walked behind her, then turned her and pulled her into his arms. She struggled against him. He wouldn’t touch her when she wanted him to, but the minute she couldn’t bear the sight of him, he held her close. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” He stroked her hair. “You have no idea how you feel about me.”
“But I guess you do know?” she asked angrily.
“I think I know better than you do.”
She pushed away from him. “You say that I’m vain, but it’s your vanity that knows no bounds. I imagine you think I care about you. Well, I don’t. I care nothing at all about you.”
“You sure looked like you cared nothing about me when I plowed my way through those men to get to you tonight. I never saw such joy on a person’s face as when I held up my arms for you and you fell into them with absolute and total trust.”
“I would have gone to any man I knew. The men who were carrying me didn’t have me balanced properly.”
“Oh? From the moment the men picked you up, Sam was not a foot from you, and since he’s somewhat taller than I am, why didn’t you see him and go to him?”
“I saw him,” she lied. “I just didn’t choose to go to him, that’s all.”
The way he grinned made her turn away.
“I wonder if we could stop arguing just long enough for you to patch me up? I’m bleeding.”
She whirled on him, immediately putting her hands on his waist and turning him about. “Where?” There was a large bloody patch on his back and at the top of it his shirt was cut. “Oh, ’Ring, you fool. This looks serious. Why didn’t you say anything? Did someone use a knife on you?” She glanced up at him and saw the way he was smiling. “Not that I care in the least. I don’t. I would help anyone in my employ, even men I don’t like. Oh, do stop smirking and take that shirt off. I have bandages in the trunk.”
“You will do anything to get me undressed, won’t you?”
“Truthfully, I like the look of you better than what comes out of your mouth.”
She saw him wince when he moved his arms out of his shirt. “Sit,” she ordered, and he did.
She’d bandaged men before and knew something about wounds. The cut wasn’t deep, and she didn’t have to sew it, but it looked grimy. “What did you do, roll in a pigsty after you were cut?”