He scowled. “Oh, my dear wife, you have not met my wild-spirited brother. You’ll see. But thank you for your support. And thank you most of all for understanding my past and my feelings.” He kissed her forehead. He’d met Mary Foster at a dance held for high officials with the railroad; her banker father had been a big investor in the Denver & Rio Grande. She had a simple beauty, her sandy hair thick and lustrous, her eyes a gentle brown, her complexion flawless. She’d been somewhat self-conscious at the dance because she was taller than all the other unmarried young women, but to him that only made her more elegant. She was not a snob, even though her upbringing could have made her so; and it broke his heart that the one thing she wanted most was something money could not buy. She could not have children. They had considered adopting, but she’d wanted a child of her own.
“How should I dress?” she asked.
He shrugged, letting go of her. “However you want, but you don’t need anything fancy where we’re going. Take one of your riding outfits. Hell, you ride better than I do, and all my sisters ride. They’d probably like to go off with you for some good gossip. That’s what women like to do, isn’t it?” He laughed lightly. “You’ll like my sisters. And you will be shocked at how different we all look, from savage Indian to sweet LeeAnn with her blond hair and blue eyes.” He took his suit jacket from the back of his chair. “Say, maybe you can show Wolf’s Blood how you can ride, do some of that jumping you do at the riding club here in Denver. He’d be impressed with that.”
“You need a special horse for that, you know,” she answered, folding her arms authoritatively.
Jeremy pulled on his jacket. “Mary, believe me, whatever kind of horse you need, you’ll find it on the ranch. My father raised the most beautiful horses in Colorado; I’m sure Margaret and Morgan have kept up the family tradition. And if I know Wolf’s Blood, he’ll be more than happy to show off some of his own trick riding. I’ve never met his children, but in this latest letter Mother sent me, she gave me a list of all the grandchildren. Wolf’s Blood has two by an Apache woman. The oldest is a boy named Hawk, and my bet is he’s as good on a horse as his father is. Wolf’s Blood wouldn’t have it any other way.” He straightened his lapels. “And Margaret named her oldest boy Zeke. Hawk is fourteen; Zeke is eighteen. He was just a little baby when I …” His smile faded. “When I left.” He walked over to a hat rack and put a silk tophat on his head. “I’ve got to get back to the office.”
Mary nodded. “I’m glad we’re going. I’m just sorry … sorry you don’t have children of your own to take along and brag about. Your mother is probably expecting to meet a few more grandchildren.”
He ached at seeing the pain in her eyes. “Mary, I am taking a wife who makes me very proud. I don’t need to present children to my mother as if they were trophies. She’ll understand. It just about broke her heart when she had to have an operation to keep her from having any more children. That was right here in Denver, after Jason was born. You’ll really like my mother, and I have no doubt whatsoever that she’ll like you. You’re a lot alike in strength and character.”
“I have a feeling that is a wonderful compliment.”
His eyes teared again. “If you knew my mother, you’d know it is. Abbie Monroe is … well, there’s no one like her. She’s a very special woman.” He walked to the door. “And no matter what kind of welcome I get, it will be quite an experience seeing the ranch again, being in that house.” He closed his eyes and turned away. “My God, the memories …” He walked out into the hallway. “I’ll be back in two or three hours. Go ahead and finish packing.”
Mary watched after him, thinking how good this was going to be for his soul. She wondered if his mother had somehow suspected he needed this.
Young Zeke Brown raced his sturdy Appaloosa gelding against Georgeanne Temple’s sleek roan mare, the animals neck and neck until Zeke’s horse finally inched ahead just before they reached the creek, which was their finish line.
“One more yard and I’d have had you!” Georgeanne yelled, pulling up her mount and patting its sweaty neck. “Poor Princess ran her heart out.”
She slid off the saddle, and Zeke did not miss the roundness of the hips that filled out her green velvet riding skirt. Georgeanne Temple was the prettiest girl in Colorado, as far as he was concerned. It was too bad she was Carson Temple’s daughter. Her father was doing what he could to make life miserable for his parents; how a man like that could produce such a sweet person, he couldn’t understand. He and Georgeanne had met two months ago, after she had returned home from a year of finishing school in New York, where she’d lived with her maternal grandmother. Georgeanne had been out riding, and Zeke had been rounding up stray horses. He would never forget that first meeting, the instant attraction he’d felt, the same attraction he’d seen in her own eyes.
Georgeanne walked up to him and held out her arms as he jumped down from his own horse. “You always have an excuse for losing,” he teased. He embraced her, loving the delicious feel of her full breasts against his own broad chest. Although his parents had instilled in him a sense of honor and humility, he was not unaware of his good looks, a mixture of one-quarter Negro, one-quarter Indian and the rest white, giving him handsome dark eyes, high cheekbones, what Georgeanne called “perfect” lips and nearly black hair that hung in a cascade of careless waves just past his shirt collar. He couldn’t help being glad for his appearance and the tall, strong build he’d gotten from both his mulatto father and his half-Indian grandfather Zeke … glad because Georgeanne Temple thought he was “the finest-looking man west of the Mississippi. At eighteen, to be considered a man by someone as educated and well traveled as Georgeanne filled him with great pride.
She kissed his cheek. “I just let you win because it isn’t ladylike to beat a man in a horse race,” she told him. Georgeanne studied his handsome grin. She’d never met anyone like Zeke Brown, so sure and solid, a man who knew responsibility far beyond the young men she’d met back East. She could not help being attracted to him, and she didn’t care that he had Negro and Indian blood in his veins. He was magnificently strong yet gentle, a soft-spoken man who could take care of himself and knew what he wanted in life, yet didn’t brag and bluster his way through life like her father. Carson Temple seldom spoke without yelling, and he liked to make sure everyone understood how important he was.
She loved her father, but he was a man so full of himself that he seldom took the time to wonder or ask how anyone else felt about anything. As far as she was concerned, her father had killed her gentle, submissive mother with his constant orders and demands. In her growing-up years she remembered her mother always crying, remembered her father berating the woman for being “weak and stupid” … remembered a gunshot … whispers … a funeral … her mother gone. It was not until she was older that she understood about the suicide.
“Don’t let go of me, Zeke.”
Zeke studied the sincere love in her brown eyes, pulled her close again, kissing her hair, her eyes; meeting her mouth when she turned her face up to capture a kiss. He most certainly loved kissing her, and when she sometimes suddenly turned fearful and possessive like this, he found himself wanting to comfort her, hold her forever. He wanted to undo the tumble of curls into which her auburn hair was bound, wanted to get rid of the clothes that kept him from seeing and touching her naked skin, yearned to taste the fruits of her breasts, ached to be inside of her. He wanted to claim Georgeanne Temple as his own, but he had his family to think about … and the trouble he could bring upon them by loving this woman.
He hated this age of being in between, having all the feelings and needs of a man but unable to be a man in every way for her. This young woman lived in a stone mansion, on the estate that adjoined his parents’ property, land that had once belonged to an Englishman named Sir Edwin Tynes … a man from his grandma Abbie’s past, one who’d gone back to England many years ago. If only he had not sold his land to Carson Temple! And yet … if he hadn’t, Ze
ke would never have met Temple’s daughter.
He couldn’t resist the urge to have Georgeanne lie down in the grass, the manly need to move on top of her. He moved a hand to a full breast that lay fetchingly beneath a bolero jacket and white, ruffled blouse. Maybe today she’d let him open that blouse, unlace her camisole, reach inside and feel her breast, touch the nipple, taste it. Maybe today …
“Zeke, we can’t do this!” Georgeanne spoke the words between a barrage of hot, hungry kisses. “I want you so much but we know we can’t do this yet,” she whispered.
“Why not? Who will know?”
“We will! What if I got pregnant?”
Pregnant? She thought he wanted to go that far with her, which could only mean she was willing to go that far, if not for their unique situation. Manly desires fought wildly against an upbringing that had taught him responsibility. He had to think about his parents, what a man like Carson Temple could do to them if he knew about this, the rage the man would inflict on the Monroe/Brown ranch if Zeke Brown got his daughter pregnant. Temple hated Morgan Brown simply because he was part Negro, hated Margaret because she was part Indian and looked all Indian. He was a prejudiced, pompous bastard, and sometimes Zeke wanted to shoot him.
He raised up on one elbow, still fondling the breast, running a thumb over the hard nipple he could feel through her blouse. “I’d love to get you pregnant, if you were my wife,” he answered. “I want you to have my babies, Georgeanne. I want you to help me run my own ranch someday. Somehow we’ll make that happen.”
Her eyes teared. “What can we do about my father? I’m so afraid of what he’d do to your parents, your ranch. I don’t want to be responsible for that, and I know you don’t either.”
Zeke closed his eyes and sighed, calling on all his strength and notions of honor to sit up and turn away from her. She was right. They couldn’t do this … yet. “Of course I don’t.” He sighed deeply, getting up and walking away from her. “I don’t know what the hell to do, Georgie. I’m afraid to tell my folks. They wouldn’t have any problem with you if they knew you, but they understand the trouble this could bring to the family—and to me. They’d tell me I should try to forget about you, but that would be impossible.”
He turned to face her, and Georgeanne noticed the lingering swelling at the crotch of his denim pants, had felt that hardness against her thigh just moments ago, had wanted to feel him inside of her. She’d lived on a ranch long enough to know about mating, and she wasn’t afraid of it, not with someone as sweet and gentle as Zeke Brown. He was a year younger than she, but seemed older. He had awakened natural womanly desires she had given little thought to before meeting him. She quickly got to her feet, knowing that if he came back and lay down beside her again, she would not be able to turn him away. Their love had grown too fast, had become too strong, their need to mate almost unbearably painful.
“We both know why I can’t tell my father.” She walked over to her horse. “Maybe we should try to stay away from each other for a while, give ourselves time to think. There has to be a way for us to be together, Zeke.”
He walked up behind her, wisely not touching her. “My grandmother Abbie will be here in a week or so. Mother says she’s a very wise woman, and from what I’ve known of her, I think she is, too. She’s been through some bad times with my grandfather Zeke over the years, big challenges like what we’re facing. I have a feeling my grandfather would know exactly what to do about this, but he lived in a time when a man could deal out his own justice and make threats and defend himself however he chose. We can’t live that way anymore.”
She turned to face him, her eyes misty. “Men like my father can. Men with that kind of wealth seem to still be able to set all the rules. I love him, Zeke, but I don’t honor him. I’m not proud of how he behaves. I’ll never forgive him for killing my mother’s spirit. As far as I’m concerned he might as well have shot her himself. He’s different with me. He babies me, holds me up on a pedestal. If he knew …” She shivered. “I know what he can be like, and it frightens me to think what he’d do to you if we told him we wanted to marry. Maybe I should just leave the ranch, and we could find a way to be together someplace else, in Denver or Colorado Springs. I don’t know.”
He dared to put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t do anything yet. Let me talk to my grandmother when she comes. Let’s try to get through the summer. I might go to college at Fort Collins. I was going to just stay here and take over the ranch someday, but if I’m going to marry someone like you, I’ll need an education, need to know other ways of expanding, making more money.”
She shook her head, turning to look up at him with a sad smile. “I don’t need a rich man, Zeke. You know that. Riches didn’t bring my poor mother any happiness, and my grandmother, sweet old woman that she is, always taught me that money means nothing. It’s love that counts, Zeke, and we have plenty of that.”
He took hold of her hand. “My grandmother would probably say that in a situation like this we have to be practical. That’s a favorite term of hers. She says Grandfather Zeke taught her that. Sometimes being practical means doing something that hurts.”
A tear slipped down her cheek. “I don’t want to be practical, Zeke, because that would mean we should end this and go our separate ways.”
They both felt an aching love, both knew they did not want to end this beautiful friendship that was turning into something much deeper. “Let me talk to my grandmother. We’ll take some time to be alone and think. No more riding together for now. When I want to meet again, I’ll leave a note for you, nailed to the tree here, like always. By then, if you’ve changed your mind—”
“I’ll never change my mind!”
His own eyes began to brim with tears. He leaned down and kissed her lightly. “I won’t either.” He turned away and leapt into his saddle without using a stirrup. “I love you, Georgeanne Temple. We’ll figure this out. I just don’t want to cause a ruckus right before my grandmother’s family reunion. This is real important to her. We’ll have to lay low at least until everybody has gone back home. You understand that much, don’t you?”
She mounted her own horse. “I understand.” She turned the horse to face him. “I wish I could be there. I’d love to meet your grandmother and your cousins and aunts and uncles.”
“I would love for them all to meet you. We’ll see how things go. Maybe you could sneak away and come meet them. The problem is, my folks don’t even know about us yet. Give me some time to decide how to tell them and my grandmother.”
She nodded. “I’ll be thinking about you, Zeke.”
“I’ll sure as hell be thinking about you.” In my bed at night, embracing a pillow instead of the woman I want to make love to. “Thanks for understanding.”
She rode closer, leaned over to kiss him one last time. They reached out and embraced once more in a hot, hungry kiss before Georgeanne quickly pulled away and turned her horse, riding off in the direction of the Temple ranch. Zeke watched her until she was out of sight, feeling a frustration inside at not being able to have her.
Four
Margaret and Morgan met Abbie and the rest of the family with two wagons. Abbie’s heart swelled with love at her being surrounded by all these descendants of the precious love she had shared with Zeke Monroe. She sat amid luggage and straw in the back of a buckboard, holding LeeAnn’s youngest, her namesake, little Abbie, on her lap. Abbie’s brother, Lonnie, sat curled next to his grandma at her left, and on her right was Lance, Margaret’s youngest. Matthew sat across from her beside Wolf’s Blood’s stepdaughter, Emily. The two were nearly the same age, and they chattered about silly things, the way children do. Abbie studied Matthew, nine, a very dark child who did not at all look as though he belonged to his blond-haired mother.
The grandson of Winston Garvey, Abbie thought. How chillingly strange. She was grandmother to a boy whose grandfather had violated her in the worst way … yet she could find only love in her heart for Matthew. He could n
ot be blamed for his paternal heritage. He would never know that Joshua, the man he now called father, was really his own uncle, a half brother to Charles Garvey, fathered by Winston Garvey and a Cheyenne woman the man had raped. What ironic twists life could take.
LeeAnn and Joshua rode in the same wagon with Abbie, and when she glanced at LeeAnn, she realized her daughter had noticed her staring at Matthew. She saw the lingering pain in LeeAnn’s eyes. The woman would never quite forgive herself for abandoning the family and marrying a man who was a hated enemy of her own father. Nor would she forget the hell she suffered as Charles Garvey’s wife.
In the other wagon rode Jennifer, with Wolf’s Blood’s Apache daughter, Iris, and Wolf’s Blood’s sister, Ellen, who with her husband Hal had accompanied Margaret and Morgan to Pueblo to greet the family at the train. Two more grandchildren, Ellen’s eight-year-old Lillian and four-year-old Daniel rode with their mother in the second wagon. Ellen and Hal owned a small ranch next to the old Monroe spread.
Margaret and Morgan’s son Zeke had brought extra horses, which thrilled young Hawk. He rode with Zeke and with Zeke’s younger brother Nathan. Jason and Swift Arrow also rode with them, and Margaret and Morgan each drove a wagon. Dan rode in the seat beside Morgan, and beside Margaret sat Dan’s wife, Rebecca.
So … here they all were. Abbie’s eyes teared at watching them, and she felt a tug at her heart at the sight of eighteen-year-old Zeke, sixteen-year-old Nathan and fourteen-year-old Hawk, all dark, handsome young men, all big and strong like their grandfather Zeke, good riders, boys turning into men. If only they could have had their grandfather with them longer.
This was not going to be easy, coming back to this place with the whole family in tow. So many years away … so many memories. She could almost see Zeke himself riding with his grandsons, laughing with them, racing against the wind. How could the memory of him still be so vivid, after eight years? How could the ache in her heart still be so fierce?
Eagle’s Song Page 4