The Savage Heart Read Free

“I’m sorry about your father,” he said. “I know you must still miss him.”
    â€œDon’t get me started,” she said through stiff lips, glancing around her to stay the tears. “I’ve tried very hard to be brave, all the way here. Even after two months, it’s still very new, being an orphan.” Her small gloved hand went to his waistcoat pocket and rested over it. “Matt, you don’t mind that I came?” she asked abruptly. “I had no one in Montana, and one of the soldiers was pestering me to marry him. I had to get away before I gave in out of sheer exhaustion.”
    â€œThe same soldier your father mentioned in his last letter to me, a Lieutenant Smalley?”
    â€œThe very one.” She withdrew her hand and twisted the handle of her frilly parasol. “You remember the name very well, don’t you?”
    â€œIt’s hard to forget the name of a man who helped kill most of my family at Wounded Knee,” he said harshly.
    She looked around them, finding people going their own way. Nobody paid undue attention to them. It would have been a different story back in Montana, where the sight of a young blonde woman with a full-blooded Sioux would have raised more than just eyebrows. Lord, she thought, everyone would have been glaring furiously at them—as they had in the past.
    â€œI remember the way you were,” she said gently. “Dressed as a warrior, on horseback, with your hair flying in the wind and your arrows winging toward the center of a bull’s-eye.” Watching her watch Raven, her father had teased her that she was losing her heart.
    Matt didn’t like remembering his past. “I remember you trying to skin a deer and throw up at the same time.”
    She held up a hand. “Please, I’m a gentlewoman now.”
    â€œAnd I’m a detective now. Shall we agree to let the past lie without further mention?”
    â€œIf you like.”
    â€œWhere are your bags?”
    â€œThe porter has them on the cart, there.” She pointed toward a steamer trunk and several smaller bags. She glanced up at him. “I suppose I can’t live with you. Or can I?”
    He was shocked. Did she know more about the past than she had ever let on? He held his breath.
    â€œI don’t mean with you,” she said, embarrassed at her own phrasing of the question. “I mean, you live in a boardinghouse, and I wonder if there’s a vacancy?”
    He let out his breath and smiled with relief. “I imagine that Mrs. Mulhaney could find a room for you, yes. But the idea of a young single woman living in a boardinghouse is going to make you look like a loose woman in the eyes of the community. If anyone asks, you’re my cousin.”
    â€œI am?”
    â€œYou are,” he said firmly. “It’s the only way I can protect you.”
    â€œI don’t need protecting, thank you. I’m quite capable of looking after myself.”
    Considering that she’d handled her father’s funeral alone and gotten here, halfway across the country, without mishap, that was apparent.
    â€œI believe you,” he said. “But you’re a stranger here and totally unfamiliar with life in a big city. I’m not.”
    â€œAren’t we both strangers here, really?” she asked, and there was a deep sadness in her tone. “Neither of us has anybody now.”
    â€œI have cousins in South Dakota and in Montana,” he replied.
    â€œWhom you never visit,” she shot back. “Are you ashamed of them, Matt?”
    His eyes glittered like black diamonds. “Don’t presume to invade my privacy,” he said through his teeth. “I’ll gladly do what I can to see you settled here. But my feelings are my own business.”
    She grinned at him. “You still strike like a rattler when you’re poked.”
    â€œBe careful that you don’t get bitten.”
    She