Cactus Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (15 page)

      
When the men adjourned to the study to smoke cigars and sip brandy, the women headed upstairs to freshen their toilettes. Tomasina lagged behind her companions and waited until Charlee was alone in the dining room stacking china. Swishing her dark blue satin skirt to get Charlee's attention, she stood imperiously in the arched doorway, inspecting her younger rival.

      
“Well, you do at least look like a girl, not a boy, now. I'll say that much,” she said disdainfully in Spanish. How well she remembered the way Diego's eyes had fastened on the low neck of her blouse when Charlee bent over to place the steaming platters on the table!

      
“I...beg your pardon? Were you speaking to me?” Charlee turned from her task and nearly toppled a stack of china in surprise.

      
“Who else is here?” Tomasina switched to English. “I want to caution you, my dear, not to indulge in girlish hopes regarding Diego. He is my fiancé and we will be married this fall. All he will ever be able to offer you is a cheap and temporary liaison as his mistress.” Tomasina watched the girl's face for any betrayal of emotion.

      
“You mean like Rosalie Parker? I don't reckon I hanker for that job, thank you.” She stared back at the hostile obsidian eyes.

      
“Surely you aren't naive enough to believe a man like Diego would marry a girl from the Missouri hills, a cowhand's sister?” Her voice was laced with scorn.

      
“You don't need to fret, ma'am,” Charlee said, with a defiant toss of her mane of bronze hair. “I have no designs on Jim Slade, marrying or otherwise. You can have the surly sucker and welcome!”

      
With that she stomped from the room, recalling in fury the disparaging comments she had overheard the black-haired bitch exchange with her cousin Beatriz earlier. They had spoken under their breaths in Spanish, but Charlee understood well enough. She had a good ear for languages and after months around Lee, Lena, and Lupe, she was learning Spanish rather quickly. She still played dumb when any outsider was around. She had picked up a lot that way, including some rather inventive cusswords from Slade, which Lee had blushed to translate literally.

      
“Smartass foreigners, think they're too good for a Missouri hill girl, do they!” She slammed dishes into the sink in a fury of confused anger. What was it to her if Jim Slade married a prissy snob like that? She certainly didn't want him!

      
Then her hands trembled, almost causing her to drop a cup, as she recalled his scorching gold eyes raking her breasts when she bent over the dining room table. “Oh, admit it, Charlee, you wanted him to notice you tonight. You dressed up for him, to please him, and all he did was act as if your looking like a woman was a crime or something,” she whispered brokenly to herself, suppressing the sudden urge to weep.

      
If Charlee was in doubt about her turbulent feelings, Jim was not in the least uncertain about his. He was mad clear through after sending a tearful, angry Tomasina home with the Sandovals and Montaldos. As he returned to the study to pour himself another drink, he mulled over their earlier conversation. She had asked to speak privately with him before the gathering broke up, so he had taken her for a walk through the flower gardens. The roses and daisies were blooming thicker than ever now that Charlee had weeded and pruned everything. Damn, why did she keep intruding on his train of thought?

      
Sina had looked hurt and walked in that haughty, tense way she had when she was angry. Slade recalled her jarring words to him.

      
“That young woman you've taken in, Diego, she all but threatened me earlier when we were alone in the dining room. She...she actually had the nerve to accuse me of tearing her skirt and said she would pour scalding coffee on me the next time I came near her! She has a terrible temper and uses the most offensive language. I realize she is attractive in an earthy sort of way...but she's so common, Diego, and so presumptuous!”

      
A slow grin had lit his face then, replacing the earlier puzzlement. “You're surely not jealous of a scrap of a girl, are you, Sina?” he had queried teasingly. “After all, you can take care of that problem easily. Marry me now. If you're sleeping in my bed, you'll know for sure no one else is.” He had taken her in his arms then and had kissed her hungrily, stilling her angry protests with his mouth and hands. It had been a long time since Rosalie left, and he had been tormented beyond endurance this night.

      
But Tomasina was not to be put off so easily. She had stormed, cajoled, and wept, pleading humiliation at the presence of a female servant with such impudent manners. No, she could not marry him until fall at the earliest and please would he consider dismissing the little tramp?
      
Tomasina always knew how to play her cards, he would give her that. She understood when to push, when to ease off, how to use her sexuality just enough to tantalize without going past ladylike bounds. She could play on a man's protective nature toward the weaker sex. Jim knew she was conniving as hell, but then he was sure all Hispanic women were.

      
Sina was every inch a lady, never uttering a vulgar word or doing anything ungraceful or crude, commanding servants imperiously, flirting with gentlemen discreetly, busying herself with dressmakers' fittings and dinner-party guest lists.

      
Slade suddenly tried to imagine Charlee fending off the amorous advances of a gentleman the adroit, inoffensive way Sina did. Charlee would flatten any man she didn't fancy; he'd bet Bluebonnet on that!

      
The more he considered the two women complicating his life, the more confused he became about his feelings. When was the last time he and Sina had discussed literature or history? All she had ever read was the religious pap the nuns had fed her in convent schools. Even the years in England had been wasted on finishing-school skills such as painting watercolors, playing the pianoforte, and doing fancy needlework.

      
He unwillingly recalled the heated political argument he had the other day with Charlee over the British abolitionist movement. She could take different sides of an issue and make a point on either side, yet do it in such an open, pugnacious fashion that she always rubbed him the wrong way. He hated for a bright woman to be not only right, but insufferably smug about it. Then, too, there was the matter of her gutter language and her penchant for doing hard, dirty, men's jobs such as hunting. She seemed to take delight in getting filthy and looking as masculine as possible...until tonight.

      
Slade shifted uncomfortably in his chair and took another stiff belt of whiskey. If that scheming little cat hadn't dressed so provocatively tonight, Sina would never have started in on him, and he wouldn't be sitting here now in a misery of sexual frustration. Damn, he knew Tomasina Carver was a lady, and he must treat her as such; but he wanted her, wanted her voluptuous ivory flesh in his bed, that lustrous midnight hair spread out on his pillow. He closed his eyes in torture but found to his surprise that it was a slim, golden body with a wealth of silky bronze hair that flashed before his mind's eye.

      
He shook his head and got up to pour another drink. As he stood by the liquor cabinet, the door opened and Charlee stepped quickly inside. Slade spun on his heel abruptly and glared at her. “What the hell do you want in here?”

      
“I was just going to pick up the glasses you men left here after dinner. Do you mind? Or are you going to refill and drink from all of them?” she snapped, taking contemptuous note of his drunken condition.

      
“For an orphan who pleaded for a job, you've certainly lost your respect for your employer, Miss McAllister,” he said sardonically, quirking one golden brow while his mouth hardened in a slash of displeasure.

      
“I show respect when it's due. You're drunk. Anyway, you won't remember what I said in the morning,” she sassed.

      
“I'm not
that
drunk.”

      
“You will be.”

      
“You're a teasing little tart who has the mouth of a guttersnipe and the morals of that tomcat you adopted.” He glared at her, taking in her heaving breasts, thrusting boldly through the thin fabric of her blouse. His eyes seemed to undress her as they raked her body down to her slim sandaled feet.

      
“You should talk, you randy stud! I know why you're such a bastard to me, mad as a bear drug out in January—your fancy ladylove won't let you touch her, and your whore's up and left you!”

      
“Keep your trashy mouth off Tomasina, Charlee. She's a lady, no mistake there, just the opposite of you. She speaks properly, acts with decorum, dresses beautifully—and has manners, an area sadly neglected in your haphazard education.” His eyes raked her body scornfully.

      
“You've been on me ever since I came here, wanting me to get out of boys' clothes. Well, I dress like a woman and this is the thanks I get!” She stood with hands on her hips, daring him to say more.

      
He scoffed, “You've dressed the way you act now, I'll give you that much. A skirt doesn't make a woman a lady, but sashaying around in that low-cut costume sure leaves no one in doubt of your gender!” His golden eyes blazed like a prodded cougar's.

      
Charlee suddenly felt frightened, uncertain what was happening or what he intended. Deciding it was just the liquor talking, she gave up the argument and turned to leave, calling over her shoulder, “Just sit here and stew in your own juices—whiskey basted!” With a jarring slam of the heavy oak door she flounced out, leaving Slade leaning against the liquor cabinet, contemplating two courses of action. He could lunge after the chit and wring her neck, or he could do as she prophesied and get drunk. Reaching for a bottle, he decided on the latter course.

      
Quivering in rage, Charlee stormed back to the kitchen, where Weevils was scrubbing the last of the pots. One look at her murderous scowl and he let out a raspy chuckle. “Yew gone 'n tangled with th' boss man agin. Best leave him be after he 'n Miz Sina had them a go-round. He'll be madder 'n a biled owl fer a few days.”

      
“How can you tell the difference? He's always got the disposition of a poked rattlesnake! I'll get the glasses from the study in the morning, Weevils. I'm going to bed. Where's Hellfire?” She scanned the room, but no orange furball was in sight.

      
“Must've gone out fer his nightly serenade.” Weevils winked at her and his huge belly shook with mirth.

      
“Honestly, is that all males ever think about, human or feline?” She huffed out of the kitchen, more disconsolate than ever over the desertion of the boon companion who always slept at the foot of her bed.

      
By the time Charlee had undressed and brushed her hair with a fierce, crackling hundred strokes, she felt her anger abate, replaced by a terrible melancholy. What a disaster the evening had turned out to be! She had tried her best to look like a woman, to be feminine and attractive.

      
“Yes, I might as well face up to it and quit denying the truth.” Charlee looked into the mirror and stared levelly at her image. “I didn't stay on here to find Richard Lee's killer. He probably did drown. First couple of weeks here, I met everyone on Bluebonnet. No one's a murderer or had any reason to want one sweet, lazy cowpoke dead. I've been staying here because of Jim Slade. I want to be a woman for him.”

      
She took a deep breath, relieved to have owned up at last to what had been tormenting her subconscious for months, maybe even from that disastrous day when she saw him for the first time, him and the elegant, beautiful Widow Carver.

      
“Why can't I be like her?” she asked her reflection miserably. “A lady! Harrumph! Mean and spiteful, but hiding it from the ones she wants to charm. If being a two-faced bitch is being a lady, he can have her and welcome. I'll never be like that and I don't want to be!”
But I want him.
With that, she slipped off her undergarments and pulled the soft, sheer folds of her night rail over her head. Then, she curled up in a fetal ball on the bed, too awash in her own unhappiness to bother braiding her hair into its usual pigtail. “Maybe Hellfire'll come up to keep me company later on.” The toll of great emotional turmoil soon claimed her and she drifted into a restless slumber.

      
A sharp, piercing screech coupled with a dull thud and a string of Spanish oaths awakened Charlee an hour or so later. Sitting bolt upright, she shook her head to clear it and listened for more noise. The wail of outrage had unmistakably emanated from Hellfire and the inventive cussing from Slade, but what of the thud? Tossing off the light sheet covering her, she hopped from the bed and raced barefooted from the room. She was sure no one else was in the house but Slade. Weevils and Lee slept in the bunkhouse, Asa had his own cabin, and Lena had been collected by her husband after the party.

      
What if Jim was hurt, or the cat? She ran through the long hall and plunged down the steps, where she narrowly missed trampling Slade' s long-legged form, which was lying spread-eagle across the landing. The culprit in the mishap sat in the shadows, calmly grooming his back. He paused a moment and stared at her with basilisk green eyes, as if saying in disgust, “Really, what a cat has to put up with around this madhouse,” then continued with his toilette.

      
Charlee knelt by Slade, who was groaning and rubbing his head gingerly with one hand as he tried to sit up. Gold eyes locked on the villain, and a few startling oaths led the tom to a swift and silent retreat upstairs to Charlee's bed.