Coming Up Roses (36 page)

Rose stood in the middle of her tent and
glanced around. She was looking, unless H.L. missed his guess, for
some other, less disreputable, place to apply her poultice. She
gave it up after a few moments. “You’re right. Very well. Move
over.”

He moved over. Rose winced as she lowered
herself to the bed. “Close your eyes,” she said.

H.L. sighed, but he closed his eyes. “It
won’t matter, you know. I’m going to see you in the altogether one
of these days.”

“
H.L.!” Again, she sounded
shocked.

This time, he found her reaction funny. “You
don’t really think I’m going to let you get away, do you, Rose? If
you do, you’re daft.”

“
Be quiet, H.L.” Her voice sounded
strained. “You need to rest now.”

“
All right.”

“
Are your eyes closed?”

He sighed. “Yes, Rose. My eyes are
closed.”

She wriggled the bottom half of her costume
down her pretty legs and kicked it off. H.L. knew she had pretty
legs, because he watched, having lied about his eyes being closed.
He felt a smile spread through his entire body as she curled up
next to him. She made sure her back was to him, but he didn’t mind.
He decided that from the way she lay on her poultice, it was her
right thigh that had been bruised.

“
There,” she muttered after a few
minutes. “I think that will do it. Try to sleep, H.L.” She sounded
very stern, as if she wanted him to think she was a toughie. Hell,
she
was
a toughie, when it
came to crooks and criminals. With H.L. May, if she tried acting
tough, he’d see it didn’t last long. H.L. was an expert. He snaked
an arm around her waist and pulled her up close to his
chest.

Rose gasped. “What are you doing?”

“
Holding you so you can’t get
away.”

“
For heaven’s— Really, H.L., you
shouldn’t be doing that.”

“
Hush, Rose. You’ve been through enough
tonight. I won’t hurt you. Hell, I can’t even move, much less
consummate a ravishment, damn it.”

“
H.L.!”

“
Hush,” he said again, laughing softly.
“Go to sleep, Rose. We both need to rest up from our battles.
Besides, we probably won’t have much time to rest before the world
interferes and starts asking us all sorts of questions.”

She tried to sit up again, but H.L. found the
strength in his body somewhere to prevent her. “Stop it!”

“
But the colonel can’t see us like
this!”

“
The colonel won’t give a rap. He’ll be
happy you’re tending to our wounds, Rose. Besides, we’re not doing
anything wrong.”

“
I don’t know,” she
muttered.

He felt her internal struggle because it had
stiffened her body. He also felt when her struggles ceased.
Happiness suffused him when she relaxed.

“
If anyone comes in here and sees us
like this, I’ll be embarrassed to death,” she muttered after a
minute.

“
Don’t worry. We’ll hear them coming in
time for you to get up.”

“
I hope so.” She didn’t sound
satisfied.

H.L. was almost asleep. “Hell, tell ‘em we’re
getting married, and they’ll go away again.”

Her body went tense for a second. H.L.
wondered if he’d lost his mind. He was too worn down to care much,
and when Rose relaxed after a second, he did, too, and
unconsciousness claimed him a moment later.

# # #

Rose frowned into the dim light of her tent,
wishing she could go to sleep with the ease H.L. May demonstrated.
But she was too on edge to succumb to the healing powers of sleep.
H.L. could say whatever he wanted to, but it would be mortifying to
be discovered in such a compromising situation. And, as she’d sent
messages to Colonel Cody, the Columbian Guard, and the police, she
expected their privacy to be interrupted any second now.

Fiddlesticks. She had to get up. She didn’t
want to. What she wanted to do was bask in the comforting pleasure
of lying here with H.L.’s arm around her.

Suppressing a groan as her bruised bottom
slid across the cot, Rose glanced back to see if she’d disturbed
H.L. Her heart pinged painfully. He looked ghastly. And it was all
because he’d tried to rescue her from the hands of villains.

As she brushed a lock of dark brown
hair away from his poor battered head, she felt a swell of
tenderness toward him. She also wanted to take a sandbag to the
other side of his head.
Tell them we’re
getting married
, her hind leg.

She huffed softly as she pushed herself to
her feet. H.L. May, the decadent, cynical newspaperman might think
such a statement funny, but Rose Ellen Gilhooley didn’t. To Rose,
marriage was a serious topic, and his flippant remark made her
heart hurt.

Which was nothing compared to the spears of
pain the bruise on her bottom was sending down her right leg.
“Oomph.” Again glancing at H.L., Rose was glad to see her
unexpected groan of pain hadn’t disturbed him. She limped over to
the hat rack she used as a clothes hanger, lifted her robe down,
and slipped it on. She supposed it was improper to receive guests,
or even policemen, in a robe, but Rose didn’t care. Her insides
were still in a turmoil over H.L.’s casually spoken Tell them we’re
getting married.

As she tied the belt to the pretty yellow
brocade satin robe she’d bought in London, Rose glared at H.L. He
looked so innocent lying there, pressing that poultice to his lump
even as he slept.

Rose knew better. He was an insidious,
lecherous creature who had almost succeeded in having his way with
her this evening. If it hadn’t been for Pegleg and his crony, Rose
would no longer be a virgin right now.

The muffled sound of worried voices reached
her, and Rose sighed heavily. She figured it was another lamentable
indication of moral laxity on her part that she regretted having
been spared defilement by H.L. May. Because the whole thing was too
depressing to think about, she ducked through the opening of her
tent to greet the newcomers and ask them to keep their voices down
so as not to disturb H.L.

Chapter
Eighteen

“
Don’t you even think about your act
for at least a week, young lady. You’ve got to get yourself well.”
The colonel spoke severely, but Rose saw the concern on his face,
and she sniffled, touched by his goodness.

“
Thank you, sir.” She felt foolish when
she had to wipe a tear from her cheek.

Annie put an arm around her. “Oh, Rose, I
can’t believe those awful men tried to kidnap you.”

The women glared at the awful men, both of
whom appeared to have lost their self-confidence. Any hint of the
swaggering bravado Rose had detected upon her first encounter with
them had been knocked out of them. The two men stared morosely at
their own booted or pegged lower appendages and didn’t utter a
sound.

Rose’s tent was awfully crowded. Generally
speaking, the only person it ever contained was Rose herself and,
sometimes when Annie visited, Rose and Annie. At the moment, Rose,
Annie, H.L., Colonel Cody, Little Elk, a Columbian Guard
representative, two burly policemen, Pegleg, and Pegleg’s friend
filled it. Her usually orderly and emptyish tent now reminded Rose
of a tin of sardines. She huffed softly, wishing the police would
take the villains away.

The two men had their wrists manacled behind
their backs, and they looked dejected. Not to mention thrashed.
Rose eyed their bumps and scrapes with satisfaction. While she knew
she’d administered one or two of those injuries, and H.L. had
delivered several others, she suspected representatives of the
Chicago police force, goaded at last into doing their duty, had
taken their resentment out on the two men, as well. Rose considered
such tactics only fair.

The two criminals had been dragged to the
Wild West in order to facilitate their identification by Rose,
H.L., and Little Elk. Rose had been delighted to comply, since she
didn’t feel like visiting the police station. H.L., after he’d more
or less come to his senses, also identified the two men.

Rose would have resented it when he’d spat on
the floor of her tent after he’d fingered the villains if she
hadn’t felt much like doing the same thing herself. Anyhow, he’d
apologized, so she guessed she couldn’t hold his lack of good
manners against him.

A burly policeman licked the point of his
pencil and painstakingly wrote a few words in the notebook he held.
“Right. And you say the big feller’s the one what took the Injun
kid the other day?” He jerked a thumb in Pegleg’s direction.

“
Yes.” Rose lifted her chin. “You might
have caught him then and spared Mr. May and me these injuries if
you’d bothered to take our report seriously,” she reminded
him.

The policeman grunted, frowned, and wrote
some more.

“
The lady’s right,” H.L. said. He’d
regained a good deal of his bounce and fighting vigor, even though
he claimed his head still ached. “We had to get the kid back
ourselves; Miss Gilhooley and me. You can read all about it in
Wednesday’s edition of the
Globe
.” When the policeman shot a scowl in
H.L.’s direction, the reporter grinned.

Rose admired his gumption, even if she didn’t
understand it. Her whole aim in life was getting people to like
her; she couldn’t comprehend H.L.’s indifference to public opinion.
She chalked it up to his being a reporter.

The colonel, who stood beside Rose and Annie,
who were sharing seats on one of Rose’s trunks, laid a hand on
Rose’s yellow brocade shoulder. “I should say so,” he boomed, his
big voice filling the tent with sound as well as bodies. “I can’t
believe you folks didn’t rush right out and try to get that little
boy back.”

Annie said, “Hmph.”

Rose said, “Indeed.”

The policeman hunched his shoulders slightly,
as if he were warding off blows. Feeling indignant, Rose offered a
“Hmph” of her own. If he’d done his job in the first place, he
wouldn’t have to be doing that, would he?

“
Right, well, the kid’s back now, and
Miss Gilhooley’s all right, I reckon.”

“
No thanks to you,” Rose reminded him
haughtily.

The policeman cleared his throat and
forged onward. “I think that’s about all the information I need
from you right now, Miss Gilhooley.” He lifted his head as if he
didn’t want to, and looked at H.L., who sat on the edge of Rose’s
bed, still holding the poultice to his head. He was grinning the
way Rose imagined the Cheshire Cat in
Alice In Wonderland
might have done.

“
Listen, boys, Miss Gilhooley and I
really need to rest. If you want more details about what happened
tonight, you can read all about them in the
Globe
. The article will be in the paper in a
couple of days.”

The policeman sighed heavily. He didn’t
respond to H.L.’s flip comment, but turned and scowled at the two
criminals. “And you two say you were hired by Arapaho Al?”

Pegleg looked mutinous for approximately
three seconds. His mutiny ended when the second policeman gave him
a vicious whack on the back of the skull with his nightstick and
growled, “Speak up, you.”

“
Cut it out,” Pegleg grunted. Before
the second policeman, who lifted his billy club in a threatening
gesture, could administer another whack, he hastened to add, “Yes.
Yes. Arapaho Al.”

The first policeman asked Cody, “You know
anything about this Arapaho Al, Colonel?”

Cody shook his white head. “Can’t say
as I do, although I’ve heard there’s a fellow calls himself Arapaho
Al who’s touring Europe at the moment. He operates a cheap
imitation of the Wild West. Reckon he staffs his show with folks he
kidnaps.” His grim visage told everyone what he thought
about
that
.

The police, the Columbian Guard, and the
prisoners left first. Rose didn’t think her tent would ever be her
own again. It seemed to her that folks intended to remain and
discuss the excitement, if that’s what you could call it, for the
rest of her life. Eventually, however, with many words of
condolence, encouragement, and support, they left Rose and H.L.
alone in the tent. Rose practically had to shove Annie out into the
night, since she seemed determined to stay as long as H.L. did. She
did it for propriety’s sake, Rose knew.

The colonel finally took Annie by the arm.
With a chuckle, he said, “Let’s go, Missie. These two want to be
alone.”

Rose felt her neck get hot. Annie muttered,
“Well, really!” But she went.

“
I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Annie,”
Rose called after her. “I’ve got to get some rest now.” She heaved
a sigh of relief when Annie gave up trying to chaperone Rose and
H.L. and marched off with the colonel. As for Cody himself, he
started whistling a popular love tune and didn’t release Annie’s
arm. Rose appreciated him a lot.

Behind her, H.L. murmured, “Thank God for
privacy.”

Rose turned around, frowning and feeling shy
now that he and she were alone in the tent once more. She hugged
her robe tightly to her body.

“
Yes.” She sighed.

“
You don’t have to stand all the way
over there, Rose.” H.L. patted the cot at his side. “I don’t
bite—very often.”

Rose wrinkled her nose. “Do you think you can
get home, H.L.? Or do you think you’d better sleep here. I don’t
suppose anyone would think anything of it, considering you’re such
a mess and all.”

“
Thanks heaps, Rose.” He
laughed.