The Savage Heart by Diana Palmer Read Free Book Online Page B

she felt the pain. Had he been aiming at another target on her body? If she hadn’t rolled over, would she be dead now?
    He was being fanciful, he told himself. Tess had been in Chicago a very brief time. Why would anyone want to kill her? No, it had to have been some renegade, perhaps a disgruntled husband or son who hated all women and found an outlet for his anger in attacking a member of the women’s movement. But why Tess?
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    B Y THE TIME M ATT LOCATED an elderly woman who made her living caring for the sick and infirm to sit with Tess, the patient was long since fast asleep on her pillows, still in her clothing. Matt looked in on her briefly and thenleft her with the sitter, Mrs. Hayes, confident from his knowledge of the woman that she’d take good care of Tess. It was much too late for him to be sitting in the room, and Tess still had to be put into her night clothing, asleep or not. He didn’t like leaving her, but there was very little he could do for her right now. He daren’t risk her reputation.
    On his way back to his own room, he was intercepted by a flustered Mrs. Mulhaney.
    â€œMr. Davis, two of my tenants are very, very upset by all this,” she said worriedly. “Please don’t think that I haven’t every sympathy for your cousin’s wound, but these suffragists do bring such things on themselves…marches and torchlight parades, and working around hospitals and living alone. It’s so scandalous!”
    Matt had to bite his tongue to keep from making a harsh reply. Mrs. Mulhaney was a victim of her own advanced age and her upbringing. She wouldn’t move easily into the twentieth century.
    â€œShe’s my cousin,” he said. “I won’t turn my back on her.”
    He didn’t smile. At times he could look quite formidable. This was one of them.
    â€œWell, and I wouldn’t expect you to!” she said, reddening. She made an odd gesture. “I’m sure that she’ll be discreet in the future—I mean, I do hope that she’ll be all right. If there’s anything I can do…”
    â€œI’ve employed a woman to sit with her,” he said. “She’ll be taken care of.”
    Matt Davis made her feel uncharitable, Mrs. Mulhaneythought. Those black eyes of his could chill her bones. She often wondered about his background. There were so many rumors about his origins. He didn’t have an accent, so she discounted those who credited him with European ancestry. However, the thought occurred to her that he might have studied English so thoroughly that he had no accent. She’d seen an African at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, and he spoke perfect English with a British accent!
    â€œIf there’s anything I can do…” she reiterated.
    Matt only nodded and went into his room, closing the door firmly behind him. Mrs. Mulhaney hovered, but only for a moment, then rushed downstairs, trying to put the troubling Matt Davis and his beautiful maverick cousin out of her mind.
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    S UNDAY , M ATT SAT with Tess and Mrs. Hayes for most of the day, not caring what the other tenants or Mrs. Mulhaney might think. Tess was much worse, and quite feverish, as the doctor had predicted. She was pale as death except for her flushed cheeks.
    Mrs. Hayes spent a good deal of her time wetting cold cloths to put over Tess’s feverish forehead.
    â€œMy husband was shot once,” she confided, “in a riot. Acted just like this, he did, delirious and tossing and turning and saying all sorts of crazy things. Poor child. She keeps muttering about birds. Ravens.”
    He was not going to tell her that he’d once been knownas Raven Following, or about the superstitions of his people concerning that large black bird.
    â€œDelirious, I suppose,” he said, his eyes on Tess’s drawn face.
    â€œShe’s been like this for most of the night and a good deal of the morning,” Mrs.