The Wildest Heart

“You know damn well I’m not in the habit of being kept waiting, like I waited for you last night! No, and you’ll find I won’t be made a fool of either! So you get out of that damned bed you’re hiding in an’ come out here and face me if you dare. Because I’m warning you—you got a whole lot of explaining to do!”

In the face of his rage, I suddenly became calm.

“In that case,” I said icily, “I must remind you that you are in my bedroom and in my house, and unless you recollect what few manners you used to possess, Mr. Shannon, you will be obliged to leave without these explanations you seem to crave. Is that clear?”

For a moment I thought he looked ready to murder me. His eyes, like shards of jagged glass, sent splinters into my skin. “Why, you—you—”

Like a brown shadow, Marta edged around his big body, her eyes round with terror.

“Your robe, patrona.” Her subdued whisper brought some semblance of control to Todd Shannon’s furiously red face.

His lips thinning, he swung on his heel, saying over his shoulder in a voice I hardly recognized as his: “I’ll be waiting outside. Five minutes—or like it or not I’ll be back in here, if I have to break the goddamn door down!”

I kept him cooling his heels for ten minutes while I put cold water on my face and chose a skirt and blouse to wear. He hated to see me dressed as a peasant. Let him find out he could no longer dictate to me! It was hard for me to imagine now that I had planned to marry him, that I had come close to being swept away by the sheer force of his personality. The Todd Shannon I rediscovered was an arrogant, blustering bully, far too used to getting his own way.

He greeted me, if it can be called that, with a sneer. “Damned if you don’t look like some dirt farmer’s gal in that getup. Is that how your half-breed boyfriend liked you to dress?”

“Why, no,” I said sweetly. “He preferred me not to wear any clothes at all. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“You’re a brazen slut!”

“And you, Mr. Shannon, are a foul-mouthed, ill-tempered boor!”

We faced each other, and my eyes refused to give way before his. He was making a tremendous effort to keep his temper in check.

“So it’s true. Well, is it?” His voice, deceptively soft at first, rose into a bellow of rage. “Damn you to hell! I have a right to know what kind of creature I asked to be my wife, an’ don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about! You and Pardee—you and Cord—God knows how many Apache braves in between. Will you tell me the truth, or am I going to have to beat it out of you?”

“Lay a hand on me, and you’ll regret it!” I said sharply. “And before you threaten me again, Todd Shannon, you might control your temper long enough to remember that I still own half of the SD, and that I can afford to hire as many professional gunmen as you can. It’s high time you remembered that you are not dealing with some poor, frightened female who cannot fight back—if a quarrel is what you came looking for.”

I saw a stunned expression mingle with the rage in his face. “By God! Do you actually mean to stand there and threaten me?”

“I was merely replying to your threat,” I reminded him coldly, and then, as his rage threatened to burst its bounds again, I added in a reasonable voice, “Surely you can see that we are getting nowhere as long as we continue to quarrel and hurl insults at each other? If you had asked me sensible questions instead of shouting accusations at me…”

“An’ what in hell do you call sensible questions? Sensible—when I’ve been made a laughingstock of—and that after I’d been half out of my mind with wondering what those bastards had done with you! What kind of man do you take me for, eh, miss? A weak fool like my nephew, who’d believe anything you tell him because he imagines himself in love with you? Oh, yes—he’s spent the morning and half last night trying to explain, standing up for you. But, by Christ, I want to hear those explanations for myself! Are you going to give them to me or not?”

“I can give you the truth, although it may not be what you want to hear. Must you stand there glowering at me?”

In the end he listened, his face set in harsh and uncompromising lines. And it was I who found it impossible to sit still, so that I walked restlessly from one end of the room to the other while I told him as much as I dared. Not everything—there were some things I could not bear to talk about, much less think about. Must I be made to feel guilty for having loved? Todd would not understand, he would begin to shout and bluster again, and so I left my own feelings out of my dry and unemotional account

Except for a few blunt interruptions in the beginning, Todd had fallen ominously silent, his tension showing only in the way he chewed viciously on the end of his cigar. As for myself, when I had finished I felt drained of all feeling. I wished that Todd would go, and leave me to myself.

“An’ that’s all you’re going to tell me?”

“That’s all there is to tell! You may believe me or not, as you wish.”

He gave me a smile that was merely a thin curling of his lips, while his eyes stayed as cold as bits of green glass.

“I’ll let you know what I believe and what I don’t believe—when I’ve thought about it.”

Then he surprised me by leaving without another word, and his sudden quietness unnerved me more than his earlier shouting and abuse had done. As he had perhaps meant it to do. I turned back to the empty room, and the afternoon, already heavy with heat, stretched before me. I had had my first confrontation with Todd—what should I do next? My mind answered me. You came here with a purpose. Find the strength you thought you had lost, and find your answers. Face reality, as you once were capable of doing.

It was time, I told myself severely, for self-examination, and a methodical organizing of my time.

Thirty-Four

By the time I had eaten the light breakfast that Marta prepared, the feeling of unease that Todd’s visit had left with me had disappeared. I had decided that I would spend what remained of the afternoon reading my father’s journals, as I should have done before.

But after Marta had cleared the table and vanished into the kitchen, I found myself staring curiously at my reflection in the mirror that hung over the mantelpiece.