Blood and Iron Ch. 05

"Where?" Again she interrupted, demanded fierce and slightly feverish. Desperate. He was wrong. He had to be. He'd misheard, or misunderstood, or he was lying to her, or... "The brothel. Where is it?"

Sadness in his smile, prim and proper, neatly placed. Speaking still so maddeningly careful and refined. "Ah, señorita. I understand your upset. I do. But you do not wish to follow him. It is no place a proper lady should even have to see."

"Don't you tell me what I want." Her answer snapped back, sharp and aching. "I ain't feelin' like no proper lady, anyhow." Pulling back her hand from his, as the breath hissed quick between her teeth.

Still he smiled, slight and sorrowful. "Señorita, it will bring you nothing but pain, if you should go after him. I little feel that I should permit it."

"I ain't askin' for permission!" She fairly shouted back at him, fists shaking at her sides. Helpless anger twisted in her gut, curdled from her tension, her frustration at his smooth and stubborn disobedience. "Just tell me where he is!"

At least this had an impact - his lips finally flattened to a mild frown, looking back at her, a strange expression in his eyes. "Yes..." The sound of lingering surprise transitioned abruptly to even tones, quick and dispassionate. Almost curt. "I suppose not. Very well. The establishment is on the northern edge of town. A two-story affair, painted pink. What you find there...well, it is none of my concern, is it?"

He turned then, strode off with so little delay that Alice would have almost thought it rude, were she not preoccupied with her own departure. Hurrying back out the door, to the stable, atop her horse. Spurred out to the north without a pause, anxiety and dread pounding in her heart. Her father wouldn't be there, where Javier had said. He couldn't be. And if he was...

---

Seated on a thickly-cushioned chair inside those pastel walls, James itched with impatience at the slow routine and expectations of a visit to the brothel. The affected friendliness of idle chatter with the madame who had sidled up to greet him, asking where he'd come from, what he did. The excruciating introductions to the girls she had working there, stepping out to turn and curtsey for his eyes in light and flimsy dresses, baring leg up to the middle thigh. Despite his silent hopes, none of them looked a thing like Alice. Not in any way that mattered. No crimson hair or gaze of green, no athletic tightness of a body toned by work and action; they were soft and sloppy women, voluptuous to an extent that no longer quite appealed. Painted up in garish colors, the thick blush slapped atop their faces seeming like a mockery of the subtly enchanting tint that had touched from time to time upon his daughter's cheeks. And for all their steady, practiced smiles...there was nothing in their eyes. No fire, no joy. Hardly even any life.

It didn't matter. Not for what he had in mind, a simple satisfaction of his body's thoughtless wants. He'd picked a girl near at random, 'Isabela,' and sat for chafing moments through the stilted struggling of conversation that followed after. The brief acquaintanceship that lent a slight veneer of meaning to these mercenary couplings. In prior visits, he even had enjoyed it - the flirtatious little back-and-forth with a woman young and lovely, pretending for a time that she truly cared what he might have to say. Today it felt an awkward, pointless thing, each of them unskilled in the other's native tongue. It was a relief when at last she rose up once more to her feet, ushered him on into a private room to do the work that was before her.

He stood there now, beside the bed, waiting as she stroked inviting down her body's ample curves. Striving to call up the flame of lust that had so recently tormented him, frustrated with the damnable coolness of his flesh. It made no sense. He had a woman here, stretched out in thin and flimsy underthings, ready to be taken. The dark brown of her nipples peeking at him through her filmy négligée, topping dusky, Latin breasts. Duly-practiced purring in her throat. "I am waiting for you, señor..." - and yet it felt so empty, hollow. Scarcely a flicker of temptation to look at her, as though she were but a pile of clay, crudely shaped into a woman's form. A pale imitation, a laughable pretender, beside the angel that waited for him when he closed his eyes.

God, but he could almost see her, even now. The vision once again of Alice in the bath, exposed, unveiled in all her glory. The smoothly shaped perfection of her trim and tempting bosom, standing firm and proud, of her slender waist and gently arching hips. The subtle curl of rosewood locks above her so-expressive features, as beautiful in sorrow as she was in joy. And those little pillows of her lips, slippery and pliant when she pressed up close to kiss him, when she suckled softly at his finger, let her loving tongue to caress along his skin...

There was his arousal, twitching against the fabric of his trousers. Awakened by the memory, by the image of his daughter. Hardly even any guilt, now, to feel it flow inside him, through him, the stirring of this terrible desire. Pragmatism there instead, hands drifting to the buttons of his shirt, of his pants - he could pretend that it was her, that it was Alice there beneath him as he drove into this woman in search of his release. Let it be his daughter's flesh on which his fingers slid and squeezed, into which he thrust...it didn't matter. Nothing mattered, save that she was protected, that he did not truly use her for his body's selfish wants. So long as it was only just a dream. The shirt was off his shoulders as he dropped down to the mattress, as he let one hand to stroke along the woman's thigh and told himself it was another's. Alice...his beloved little girl, his little rose...

Engaged in this indulgence, James little heard the slamming of the brothel's outer door, was only distantly aware of heated voices in the parlor on the floor below. Not until the bedroom door burst abruptly open there behind him was his attention captured, did his startled gaze wheel round to see the figure standing there in heavy boots and sweeping duster. Her eyes already fixed to his, staring with so great and thick a welter of emotion that he could scarce begin to read it. Rage and heartbreak all at once, betrayal tight and anguished on her lips.

It was just a moment later that the madame appeared behind, clearly flustered, speaking swift and apologetic. "Forgive me, señor. She would not listen when I requested that she leave. Threatened me, she-"

"'ts all right." James interrupted, murmured low and quiet. Looking still at Alice, at her rigid jaw and burning gaze, as he felt the burden of his own half-undress, of the woman laying awkward there beside him on the bed.

A moment passed, a beat, the madame gingerly withdrawing from the scene, aware of something deeper here between them. That long before his daughter spoke. "Why?" Rasping from her throat, trembling in pain and fury. Her brow pulled taut and low, a tinge of red beginning already to stain around her muddy pupils.

He could only shake his head a trace, mutter grave and solemn. "You shouldn't'a come here, Alice." A thread of guilt, of shame along his spine. For the hurt that he had feared, now brought before him. For how lovely she appeared to him even now, stiff and quivering in anger.

She hardly responded to the words. "Ain't I good enough?" Stepping closer with a heavy tread, bitterness and accusation scraping rough across her tongue - he rose up from the bed himself, hitching up his trousers towards a semblance of decency. Distantly thankful that at least she had not burst in minutes later, and found him in a greater impropriety. "Ain't I pretty enough, ain't I...?"

The words choked off without conclusion, dissolved into a jumbled ache of feeling that burned like poison in his ears, in his heart. He could only shake his head a trifle, answer low and ghostly. "Ain't about that."

"Ain't about that!" The laugh that shuddered out of her could just as well have been a sob. Repeating the words - mocking, incredulous, furious. Hysterical. "Ain't about that! Ain't never about nothin', is it? Ain't no reason why you run off when I turn my back, why you'd say I'm beautiful and then go out'n find yourself a whore!" Those fine pink lips twisted down in misery, as wetness glistened in her eyes. "You such a coward you can't even say it? That I ain't what you want at all, that you figure I'm just crazy? Only puttin' up with me because of obligation?"

Behind him, the woman James had hired tried subtly to gather up her clothes around her, to slink off from the center of this fight. But she had not passed two feet from the bed before the flame of Alice's gaze was turned to her, attention baleful and fierce, rage unhindered by any softer feeling. "And you," a snarl on her lips, anguish sharpened almost into madness. "You figure you can just show off a little leg t'get anyone you want? You think after all I done to find him, all I done to keep him from dyin', I'll just let you take him from me?" And as the last few words trembled off her tongue, her right hand came up clutching her revolver, pointing at the woman's chest.

A few things happened all at once. A little scream of terror as the woman tossed her hands into the air, let her discarded clothing to tumble to the floor as she exclaimed in Spanish. James, beside, hurried forth a step to stand between them, speaking with a calm and an assurance far beyond the tension that he truly felt. "You can't do that, Alice."

This intervention seemed to hit her almost as a solid blow, her shoulders tightening beneath a fresh collapse of misery. The ache almost imploring on her tongue, "You're protecting her?"

"No, I ain't." He denied it, swift and serious as he was able, scrambling for something to defuse this crisis here before it exploded into tragedy. "Listen now - I'm protecting you. You shoot this girl, and damn sure people won't be near as grateful as when you put away them crooked guards." Staring at her, at those enchanting eyes now boiling with rage and sorrow. Willing her to reason. "They'll be callin' for a noose around your neck."

"Think I care?" Alice spat back, blustered vicious, though he still could hear the hollowness of pain within her tone. "I'll put a bullet in anyone't tries. Anyone that gets in my way. Ain't no different than what you done yourself. Maybe then I'll even be..." Despite her striving of fire and ferocity, the words were crumbled to a cracked and aching ruin before she could complete the thought. A damp glitter in her gaze, as anger struggled mightily to hold back tears. Trying again, with even less success. "Maybe you'll..."

"Alice." He interrupted softly, the faintest note of chiding in his voice. "I know you ain't the type."

Quiet then, a silence that lingered on as Alice tried to recompose herself, to find her voice and force back the slight upwelling of her tears. Glaring back at him, wrathful and wretched at all once, an almost pleading in her gaze even as she still held her gun upon his chest. The way she had a week before, at their reunion, when he had offered only pitiful excuses for why he'd left her, all those years ago. A struggling of feeling in her features, tense and agonized, a keening of emotion that echoed painful in his heart. He hadn't wanted this, wished now that he had not come here, that there had been some other way. Whatever he had thought before, whatever chill of calculation, whatever grim and measured certainty that it was just what must be done...he did not have the stomach for it now, faced with the reality of her anger and her tears.

"My own fault, ain't it." It was a mutter, a bitter, choking grunt forced out resistant from her throat. A rigid, rasping tightness to her stance, limbs held stiff together as though they might otherwise collapse into a heap; the gun dropped again into its holster, and Alice didn't even look at Isabela as she scurried from the room. Her eyes still fixed instead upon her father, speaking low and quietly accusing. "Bein' such a fool. Trustin' you again, when you even said yourself you was a liar." A harsh and broken mutter upon those perfect lips. "Lovin' my own pa this way, knowin' he's a thief, a cheat, a killer. Just..." Another bout of silence as she shook her head, swallowed - but when she looked up again at him, her eyes were dry. Defiant. "I figured I could be enough. That even if you ain't but the lowest man on Earth, I still could learn to be your woman. That you'd give me half a chance before headin' out to make love to a stranger."

He could manage just a little grimace, recrimination aching in his mind. The lowest man on earth - how close to that he felt. All his best efforts seemed just to lead to ruin, to disaster and regret. Seeking to spare her from his lusts, and succeeding only just to make her think that she was second fiddle to a prostitute...truth was feeble, quiet on his tongue. "I wouldn't'a been makin' love to her, Alice."

She snorted back, soft with dismal disbelief. Sarcasm twisting sour in her voice, a tone almost of resignation. "Right. I reckon you was gettin' ready for a game of pinochle."

"No," he shook his head, spoke low and solemn. "Just makin' time...you got to understand, there ain't no love in a thing like that. 'ts just about the act, about gettin' some relief." Her gaze in his, narrowed with frustration, with mistrust. Anger still thrumming just beneath her skin, apparent to the eye. "I wasn't lyin', neither. Leastwise, not when I said you were beautiful." A flicker of a smile on his dry, cracked lips - he could offer little more. "Man can't hardly look at you without thinkin' what could be, dreamin' it. I ain't even got the words to rightly say how fine a girl you are. Like an angel come down to earth, traded in your wings for blue jeans. Like a flower, growin' here in the dirt. A wild rose...don't reckon I'd even be here, if you weren't."

She was already working at some sharp rejoinder, self-pitying and bitter - but she had spoken no more than half a word before his final sentence seemed to strike her, before she paused, glanced back into his eyes. Perplexity and suspicion on her tongue. "What do you mean, you wouldn't be here?"

"Ain't you listened?" The faintest edge of humor, wan and little felt. "Way I feel for you, Alice...it ain't the way a father oughtta. And the way we been these past few nights, last night..." He shook his head, bit a moment at his tongue. The truth. Almost a relief to speak it, the things he hadn't wanted her to know. After all his bluffing, all his attempts to muddle through in search of a solution he could scarce begin to name...maybe it was time now just to lay his cards upon the table. "Got me close to givin' in, doin' something to you that I couldn't never take back." His eyes heavy, solid. "I can't let that happen. 'ts why I come out here, try to clear my head before I lose control. God help me, little rose, but this ain't 'cause I don't want you. It's 'cause I do."

For a few long moments she just stared at him, lips sealed shut. Breathing through her nose, quick and deep. Disbelief upon her brow, a look almost accusing twisted through her expression. Through her tongue, as at last she spoke, a high and forceful whisper hissing past barely-parted teeth. "What?"

James hesitated, frowned, uncertain of the meaning of the question. Tried to find a way to restate this appalling truth with at least a trace of delicacy. "I'm sa-"

He got through no more than that - cut off as Alice moved with all her practiced swiftness, as her fist abruptly caught him squarely on the jaw. Dainty knuckles crashing into bone, sending him to stagger back a step, head spinning through a quarter-turn. Grunting low, unthought, as the blow bloomed white and sharp along his nerves. Despite her skill, Alice did not have quite the mass or muscle of a man, and her strike made for more surprise than pain - but there was still quite enough to inspire a moment's daze and sluggish shock. And he had hardly turned again to face her, bringing up his hand to rub ruefully where she'd hit him, when the deluge started.

"You think that's better?" Her tone ascended from a whisper up almost to a scream. "Think I'll be happier, knowin' that you want me while you're sleepin' with someone else? That I won your eye and still can't have you?" Arms trembling with fury at her sides, hands curled into shaking fists. "You figure I'll be glad there ain't even any reason why you won't have me, why you'd sneak out behind my back to lay down with some woman you don't even know?"

"'ts nonsense, Alice," he mumbled back around his aching jaw. Unable quite to look her in the eyes, to face her pupils glittering like little stars. "There's plenty reason. I'm your father, I can't...thing like that, it ain't supposed to be."

Another moment passed, another breath - he could not help but flinch a little as she moved again in his direction, anticipating another blow. As she lunged suddenly upon him like a mountain lion on a deer, capturing her prey...but contact here was somewhat softer. Her modest bosom crushed against his chest, cushioning her impact, wiry arms slipping back around his neck to clutch him tight; there was no time in which to think before he was borne backwards for a step to half-collapse upon the bed, before her honeyed lips were pressed to his. A fervent kiss, insistent, defiant. Demanding - this was not the loving gentleness, the hesitation and the artless striving that had carried her before. There was anger in her motions now, in the mashing of her moist and pliant lips upon his mouth, fiery and fierce. But it was just as thrilling as before, intoxicating, her slender curves pressed firm against him, her shifting weight upon his lap as the sweetness and the naked hunger of this kiss slipped through the yawning cracks in his control. His own arms slipping up instinctive to her waist, to her back, while her roaming lips soothed his jaw's remaining hurt.

"No such thing as 'ain't supposed to be.'" Her fearless murmur traced swift along the whiskers of his cheek when at last she pulled away. Her fingers squeezing tight, emphatic at his shoulders as she glared into his eyes. "Don't make a lick of difference if you are my father. I love you, pa," the words sounding at this moment almost like a threat, a warning. "And if you feel the same, there ain't nobody out there that can tell us 'no.' Ain't no reason we can't have the same as any other man and woman could." Sitting there astride him, her taut and shapely bottom resting on his thighs. Her legs on either side, doubled back. "It ain't hurtin' anyone, for us to be together."

"It is." His voice was shallow, weak, striving vainly for the sternness that had served him well before. The words were all he had now - his body didn't listen, refused to take his hands from where they sat upon her back, refused to stop her as she pushed his shirt from off his shoulders, letting it to fall in a heap upon the bed. "It's hurtin' you, it's..." Silence, trailing off. He could not quite hold the reason in his mind, the harm that would befall her if they surrendered to this sin. But there were other answers. "Even if it ain't, that don't mean it's somethin' that can be. Folk'd likely string me up if they knew I done a thing like that with my own child."

"I ain't gonna tell'm." A reckless promise on her lips, hovering just inches now from his. One hand stroking up along his chest through the scratchy fabric of his underclothes, the other swiftly working at the wooden buttons of her shirt. "Ain't gonna let'm do it, neither. After all I done, all the years I spent, I ain't about to let nobody take you from me. Nobody." Her tone thick and solid with determination - while he could little keep his gaze from flitting down to see her fingers at their work, the baring of the skin above her breast, her narrow, steady shoulders, that tempting little strip of flesh about her waist, left uncovered both by her drawers and her corset... "'sides, you ain't ever taught me I should be afraid of what other folk would say, what they'd do." Her tongue seemed now to carry not the slightest trace of doubt. "Ain't nothin' in our way. We just got to...to do it."