The Wildest Heart

“Intrusion, is it? Well let me tell you Lady Rowena Dangerfield, that I refuse to hide away from facts, or to pretend to be what I ain’t, either!” He glared at me, and jerked his head contemptuously, taking me in from the soles of my bare feet to my braided waist-length hair. “Look at you! Sure, an’ it’s like a Mexican peasant woman you look in that getup! Didn’t know what to believe when some of the boys said they’d seen you out ridin’ with your hair flyin’ and a tan to your face. An’ then Mark had this letter from his ma in Boston, and they was all ravin’ about what a bloody beauty you were, and your fine, fancy clothes made by some Frenchman, and your jewels.”

“Will you stop shouting at me?” I’m ashamed to confess that I lost my temper at that moment, and was now as angry as he was. “How dare you burst into my house like this and begin to abuse me? How dare you question me? I’ll remind you, Mr. Shannon, of something I told you before. You may own one-half of the SD and you may own your stepdaughter and your nephew too, but you don’t own me! Don’t ever presume to criticize the way I choose to dress, or anything I choose to do!”

I saw angry red color suffuse his face, and for a moment I even thought he might strike me, and I stood my ground with my chin up daring him to do so.

“You—now look, miss, I won’t be spoken to that way by any little chit of a girl, partner or not, you hear?”

“How can I help hearing when you don’t have sufficient self-control to lower your voice?”

I looked him contemptuously in the eye, and deliberately planted my hands on my hips, peasant-style. “I wonder if you realize how ridiculous you look? Standing there like a thundercloud and shouting. What on earth do you hope to achieve? Do you imagine that loud noises frighten me? You are such a silly, petty man, Mr. Shannon! Under any other circumstances, your cheap blustering would merely amuse me.”

“So I amuse you, huh?” He said it between his teeth, his head lowered like that of an angry bull. “Well, let me tell you, you knife-tongued little bitch, this is a man’s world you’re livin’ in out here, and like it or not, you’re gonna need a man to help you out!”

“And you call yourself a man merely because you are bigger than I am and have a louder voice?”

Knife-tongued, was I? If I had my way, I’d flay this brute of a man alive!

“I don’t need any reminders I’m a man, missy! But I got some real doubts whether you’ve ever learned to be a woman yet. By God, with that tongue of yours an’ the way you talk down to a man, there’s no doubt you’ll end up a dried-up, bitter old maid!”

“Better that than being tied to some oafish man who’ll imagine he can make a slave of me,” I flashed back at him.

I had forgotten my dignity, forgotten my resolutions to remain composed. All I knew was that my fingers itched to slap Todd Shannon’s face, and I might have done so if he hadn’t forestalled me.

“So you?

?d be pretendin’ you don’t like men, eh?” he muttered at me, the Irish brogue slipping back into his voice as it did when he was angry. He took me in his arms as if he wished to punish me, and for the first time I raged helplessly against the sheer strength of the man. “We’ll see, shall we?” I heard him sneer, and then his lips, those same thin, cruel lips I had hated, came down over mine.

His arms, holding me so closely pinioned against his body that I could hardly breathe, were as immovable as rock. And, damn him, he took his time about kissing me, too. I think he enjoyed my useless struggles, and my choked, furious gasps of outrage. This was his way of teaching me how helpless I really was, and I hated him for it; hated him more because his kisses, as expert as they were, had actually begun to stir up some dormant, unrecognizable feeling in me. I had endured Sir Edgar’s kisses and felt nothing at all except a faint annoyance.

But Todd Shannon—oh, God, the man was diabolically clever! His kisses went from anger to passion and then to feigned tenderness. I think he knew how he made me feel and took a delight in it.

Sheer desperation made me clever and I pretended to relax in his arms, hearing him chuckle deep in his throat. I closed my eyes and pressed closer to him, and his arms loosened slightly.

“Damned if there wasn’t a woman hidin’ under all that ice, after all,” he whispered, and a jolt of sheer, unadulterated rage swept me at his crowing conceit.

I freed an arm and raked at his face with my nails, exulting in the stunned, stupid look I surprised in his eyes for a moment.

“You big ape! Did you really imagine I enjoyed your kisses?”

“God damn you for a cheatin’ bitch!”

He knocked my hand away, almost breaking my wrist with the force of his anger, and then as I brought both hands up he seized my wrists, forcing them behind me, so that he had me held closely against his chest.

“Like any little bitch, you need to be shown who’s master,” he snarled. “You’ve been provokin’ me, and you’ve teased me deliberately, but by God, you’re gonna pay off now!”

Every time I attempted to twist my head aside he would laugh and give my wrists a jerk I felt sure would shatter them, and forced a moan of pain through my stiff lips. In the end, as he had been sure I would, I yielded and let him kiss me for as long as he wanted to, until my lips felt swollen and bruised and opened of their own accord to accept his seeking tongue.

I saw scarlet sparks from the last strong rays of the rapidly setting sun reflected in his blue green eyes, when at last he lifted his head. But this time he did not laugh.

“Damned if you ain’t the strangest woman I’ve ever met! An’ Godalmighty stubborn as well. What am I gonna do with you?”

I had never felt more humiliated in my life as I did then, with tears of self-pity and rage prickling behind my eyelids. I could almost have endured a brutal rape better than I could the memory of his slow, deliberate kisses, his forcing of a response from me. For I had responded, and that was the worst humiliation of all.

“You might release me to begin with,” I managed in a husky, low voice. “And after that, perhaps you’ll leave, if you’re sure the display of brute strength is over.”

“Girl, why won’t you learn to hold your tongue? We could get on together, you and I—”

I would not let him finish. “Because you feel you’ve got the best of me? Or because you imagine I might just be a convenient outlet for your moments of passion?”