Trilby

by Diana Palmer

  “I always wanted to go on the stage,” Sissy replied mischievously. “He was very attractive and I wanted to make him notice me. Now, I’m not sure I should have. He isn’t at all what I expected.”

  “That seems to work both ways.”

  “Trilby!”

  She got up as her father came into the room. “Get your hat and jacket on, please,” he said haughtily. “We’re going to pay a call on Thorn Vance. I must make certain that he deals with this problem. Sissy, I shall have to ask you to accompany us.”

  “But—” Sissy began.

  “Please do as I ask,” he said curtly. “I shall be standing in for your brother, since I know Mr. Vance better.”

  Which, translated, Trilby thought wickedly, meant that Richard didn’t relish having his back teeth knocked out by Mr. Vance for challenging his employee.

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Trilby murmured, smiling at Sissy as she got her things together.

  THORN GAPED AT his visitors. “You want me to what?”

  “Fire that ruffian Apache, of course,” Jack Lang said huffily. “I really can’t have him treating a female guest of mine in this fashion, even if he does have a vocabulary like an Oxford scholar.”

  “He didn’t treat me in any fashion, Mr. Lang,” Sissy groaned. “Why won’t you listen? He saved me from a flood!” She turned to Thorn, exasperated. “Mr. Vance, can’t you make him understand? I was not insulted.”

  “But you were, my dear,” Jack argued. “To have a savage like that actually touching you…”

  “Since I seem to be the cause of this tempest, perhaps I should participate in the debate?”

  The object of the discussion walked in the door, tall and very composed, having been forewarned of this visit by Thorn after Jack Lang had telephoned that he was coming over.

  Naki looked taciturn and very Apache in his characteristic clothing with his long black hair loose around his broad shoulders. But he smiled at Sissy. She smiled back.

  “I say…” Jack Lang began hesitantly. Naki was tall and fit, and Jack was too aware of his own physical limitations.

  Naki came closer, towering over Jack. “You find me objectionable, Mr. Lang. May I know why?” he asked quietly.

  Jack’s face went scarlet. “You’re very direct.”

  “I find that it saves argument,” Naki replied. He didn’t lower his eyes or retreat an inch. If anything, he looked more belligerent than Jack did. “I want to know why you find it objectionable that I saw Miss Bates home.”

  “It—it wasn’t that,” Jack faltered. “Of course we’re grateful for your intervention.”

  “But you would have preferred that a white man save her. Unfortunately, they were in short supply at the time.”

  Jack had the grace to lower his eyes. This man was as well educated as Sissy had intimated he was, and Jack felt like a cad.

  “I expect such prejudices from Arizonans, Mr. Lang,” Naki replied. “Sadly, I do not expect them from Easterners, who are supposedly more sophisticated and better educated than rural settlers.”

  Jack grimaced as he met the Apache’s eyes. “Prejudice doesn’t have a permanent address, sir, I’m sorry to say.”

  “Back East, it is people with black skin, not red, who are objects of scorn, is it not?” Naki asked coldly. “People who were, in their native lands, warriors.”

  “You phrase things in an unusual way.”

  “Before the Spanish came, the Indians in Mexico were Aztecs and Mayas,” Naki continued. “They were a proud and intelligent race with their own system of government and worship and economic structure. Cortés and the Spanish, or course, destroyed them. The Aztecs and Mayas were ‘savages.’ Now it is the intelligent people, the Spanish conquerors, who take land from the peons and give it to wealthy foreign landowners and enslave the native people by working and taxing them to death. This is civilized behavior, I take it?”

  Jack cleared his throat. “Sir, you have an odd grasp of the reality of things.”

  “I have an honest and unprejudiced view of the world around me,” Naki replied. “I base my opinion of people on character, not color.”

  “Naki spends his summers leading Craig McCollum around the desert,” Thorn said. “He’s quite knowledgeable, as you see.” His dark eyes glittered. “And out here, we don’t consider it an insult for a man to save someone’s life.”

  “But it isn’t done!” Jack argued.

  “I think it is for me to say if there was an insult,” Sissy insisted. “And I assure you that there was not. This gentleman saved my life. How can you condemn him for it?” she asked Jack. “Would you rather, if it had been Trilby, that she die in a flood rather than accept help from a man whose skin color was different than hers?”

  Put like that, Jack could find no further argument. He subsided. “I must concede that I should rather have my daughter than my prejudices,” Jack said. “But your brother—”

  “My brother is a prejudiced, foppish snob,” Sissy said icily, ignoring Trilby’s start. “Like his contemporaries, his outlook on the world is as narrow as a beam.”

  Jack cleared his throat while Trilby flushed; Thorn’s eyes began to glitter with amusement.

  “I apologize for my behavior,” Jack said to Thorn, and reluctantly included Naki in his apology. “I am grateful for what you did.”

  “De nada,” Naki said in careless Spanish. “I daresay the contempt of my people was worth a life.”

  “Sir?” Jack asked.

  “My people find whites distasteful, Mr. Lang,” Naki took pleasure in pointing out. “They will disapprove of my contact with a white woman, regardless of the reason.”

  “Of all the impertinent…!” Jack gasped.

  Naki chuckled softly. After a minute, the Easterner grasped the analogy and a smile touched his mouth.

  “Yes, I do see your point,” Jack replied.

  “Let me walk you out,” Thorn offered. He took Trilby’s arm, his touch triggering a mild shock to her system. Incredible that Richard, whom she loved, couldn’t cause this kind of reaction. It was only provoked by a man whom she detested. Or…did she?

  “Close call, white eyes,” Naki said under his breath to Sissy.

  “Not my idea to come raging over here, either.”

  “I knew that.”

  She studied him covetously, seeking his dark eyes. “We’ve already agreed that it would be a bad thing to try and become friends, under the circumstances.”

  “A very bad thing,” he agreed.

  “Too much opposition.”

  He nodded.

  She smiled wistfully. “I hate people telling me who I can choose for friends.”

  He smiled back. “So do I.”

  It was like having the sun come out of a cloud. Her heart lifted and began to shine through her green eyes.

  He wanted far more from her than friendship, but it was all they could have. He knew it, even if she didn’t. “They won’t make it easy for you,” he said, nodding toward the others who were walking toward the car.

  She stared at him levelly. “I don’t care,” she said huskily, without realizing what she was telling him until it was too late.

  His eyes splintered with feeling. His jaw tautened as he recognized the emotion for what it was. His fists clenched by his side.

  “Sissy!” Trilby called in a curt whisper.

  Sissy moved quickly onto the porch ahead of Naki. She looked unsettled, so Trilby maneuvered just in front of her while they made their goodbyes.

  She hadn’t known if Thorn was aware of the undercurrents until he darted a glance back at Naki and then at Sissy before he met Trilby’s worried eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” he said under his breath. “I’ll handle it.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said quickly, mindful of being overheard while Sissy was asking Jack to help her into the car.

  “Yes, I do,” Thorn said. “It’s all right.”

  Oddly that pacified her. He lifted her ha
nd to his mouth and kissed the warm, moist palm hungrily. Her face colored, and he held her eyes for a long, taut moment.

  “I know exactly how he feels!” he whispered fiercely, his eyes as stormy as Naki’s had been. He abruptly let go of her hand. Then he led her to the car and helped her in with a stony face and without another word. All the way home, Trilby heard nothing that was said. Her palm still tingled.

  CHAPTER TEN

  LISA MORRIS WAS drifting between reality and a dream. She smiled as she remembered the swing in her backyard when she’d been a little girl. Her father had been away on maneuvers, and she and her mother had stayed with her maternal grandmother in Maryland. There had been a huge Victorian house and a big yard with a swing hanging from the branches of the trees.

  “I do so love to swing,” she whispered dimly.

  “What a hell of a thing to be dreaming about,” came a disgusted, sarcastic voice.

  She forced her eyes open. A man was standing over her, a tall, lean man in a soiled officer’s uniform with the tunic open. He was unshaven and his thick black hair was lying rumpled on his broad forehead. There was no male beauty in that rugged countenance, and he had lips that seemed set in a permanent sneer. In his big hand was a thick shot glass that looked recently drained.

  “Captain Powell?” she asked huskily.

  “Himself.” He nodded. He set the shot glass down with a thud. His bloodshot eyes looked down into hers. “How do you feel?”

  “Sore.” She grimaced as she moved, and then flushed as she realized that she was wearing nothing under the sheet that covered her. She was horrified.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, I’m a physician,” he said icily. “Do you really think that at my age a woman’s body is any mystery?”

  She swallowed and clutched the sheet. She was woozy from the drugs and her hip and side were stinging from the bad burn, but she had a little modesty left. “You’re a man,” she began, trying to explain her embarrassment.

  “And you’re a married woman,” he added. “Moreover, a married woman who’s lost a child.”

  Her face clouded. Yes, he would have reason to know. The night she lost the baby, he’d stayed by her bedside all night long. He’d held her hand and talked to her in a voice so soft that it hadn’t seemed like this cynical man’s at all. David, she recalled, had been away on maneuvers. She hadn’t known at the time, but he’d been in Douglas with Selina that particular night.

  “You stayed with me,” she said drowsily, and smiled. “Did I ever thank you?”

  “I’m a doctor,” he reminded her. “It’s my job.”

  God forbid, in other words, that anyone should accuse him of tender feelings or compassion, she thought suddenly. He was very soft under that nasty veneer. No wonder he did his best to terrorize the people around him.

  She lay back against the pillow with a shaky sigh. Her hair was loose around her white shoulders. She looked drawn and wan, but the man looking at her found her beautiful.

  “He hasn’t left a mark on you, except that one on your cheek,” he said unexpectedly.

  She touched the bruised place. “He hasn’t ever hit me before.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant, although I hold him in contempt for it, just the same. I meant,” he added slowly, searching her eyes, “that you seem untouched.”

  She lowered her eyes to his tunic. Under it, thick black hair was visible where his red long johns were unbuttoned. She averted her gaze quickly. That evidence of his masculinity seemed indecent in this room, despite his profession.

  “Do I embarrass you?” He laughed. He sat down beside her on the bed and turned her face back to his taunting eyes. They were a vivid, bright blue and they seemed to see right through her. “You don’t like looking at me, do you? I’m ugly and hairy, and the kind of ruffian a woman like you wouldn’t give a second look, even if you weren’t married and decent.”

  She caught her breath at his plain speaking. “Captain Powell, please!”

  “He hit you,” he said harshly. “I could have killed him for it! My God, he never deserved you!”

  It was beginning to dawn on her that he cared about her predicament. She looked up at him with shy curiosity. “You’re very blunt, sir.”

  “Yes, I am. Blunt. And a little drunk. I drink to forget what the Apaches did to my wife and son, Mrs. Morris. They tied me to a post and made me watch it.”

  Her hand went up to his face and she touched his cheek with shy compassion. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Oh, I’m so sorry!”

  His voice broke. He lay his unshaven cheek against her breasts over the sheet and began to weep. Hot tears fell on her. She felt them even through the fabric, and she hesitated for only an instant before she cradled his face to her. Déjà vu, she thought. He drank to numb his pain, but he wasn’t proof against it. How often did he feel this torment—and have no one to share it with, no one to hold him? What a travesty life was, she thought miserably. Was anyone free from suffering in all the world? Her arms tightened around him and she cradled his head to her, whispering soft words of comfort.

  A long time later, he lifted his head and moved away from her, his face quiet and faintly shamed.

  “I have felt so sorry for myself,” she said quietly. “You make me ashamed. I have so little to mourn, compared to you.”

  His back stiffened. “I drink too much,” he said abruptly. “Do you need something to help you sleep?”

  “No, thank you. The pain is—is not so bad.”

  He nodded and started out.

  “Captain…Powell?”

  He turned, hesitant after his loss of control. “Yes, madam?”

  “Please. Do you have a—a shirt or something that I could put on?” She flushed and dropped her eyes.

  “Forgive me. It’s been a very long time since I’ve been around a decent woman.” He moved into the other room and came back with a white dress shirt, a very long one. He laid it beside her on the cot. “You are in no condition to put it on.”

  She went scarlet. “Sir…”

  “Doctor.”

  After a minute she gave in to the offer of help. He was a doctor, and she was too dazed and in too much pain to manage alone.

  He slid an arm behind her, helping her into a sitting position. She groaned, because every movement was painful. He’d put salve on the burns and lightly bandaged them, but any motion that pulled the skin was excruciating.

  “Just sit still and let me get you into it,” he said stiffly.

  He pulled the sheet down. In the faint light of the lamp, he looked at her small, pert breasts. His expression changed. She felt his professional interest change to a very personal one, and her body reacted to his intense scrutiny in a way she didn’t understand. David had never looked at her. He’d taken her, very roughly, but not in love. He’d never wanted to look at her nude body. But this man was not only looking, he was telling her with his eyes that he found her exquisite.

  I must not enjoy this, she told herself. Only a kept woman would allow a man to look at her nudity so openly and not protest.

  “Captain Powell,” she said, shaking, then drew an arm up over her breasts with flushed embarrassment.

  His vivid blue eyes searched hers. “Forgive me,” he whispered. “Forgive me. I…” He fumbled with the shirt and eased her arm into it, gently putting it in place before he moved it around her and helped her put the other arm in. He buttoned it with big fingers that barely managed the task before them they were shaking so badly.

  He helped her back down and drew the sheet over her again. “It will be sore for several days. If you are determined to return to your barracks, your—your husband will need to help you dress until the healing process has time to take hold.”

  “I have no intention of going back to the barracks. And even if I did, sir, my husband cannot bear the sight of me,” she said through her teeth, her eyes staring straight up at the ceiling. “I could expect more help from a passing stranger than from him.”

  He
looked down at her wan face for a long, long time. “I cannot imagine a man so blind, madam, that he could resist the sight of you unclothed. And if saying that to you is indecent, then I am indeed a sinner in need of salvation.”

  He turned and left the room, a little unsteadily. Lisa stared after him in mute surprise. Her body tingled with new sensations, ones that her neglectful husband had never been able to arouse in her. She clutched at the sheet and closed her eyes. She prayed for a long time, confessing her pleasure in Dr. Powell’s eyes and her need for forgiveness. She was a married woman to whom infidelity was unthinkable. Even if her husband had indulged in a sinful affair, she was a different kind of person. She was not free to enjoy any sort of relationship, even an innocent one, with another man. Not until her divorce was final. All the same, the doctor’s eyes had provoked a sensation she’d never known in her life. She hoped that by morning he might think it had been a dream. Perhaps in time, she could even convince herself that it had been.

  COL. DAVID MORRIS was off post, as he had no right to be, spending the night in Selina’s arms. It was the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last, he thought. He did love this woman.

  He rolled over, his face stark in the moonlight that came in through the window. His behavior had shocked him. He hadn’t meant to hit Lisa. God knew, she was entitled to be outraged at the way he’d treated her. He’d married her to advance his career; he’d dragged her out here to a life for which she was unsuited; he’d made her pregnant and then ignored her when she miscarried; he’d been having a passionate affair with another woman. When Lisa had announced that she was leaving him, he’d hit her. He groaned aloud. He hadn’t meant to strike her. He certainly hadn’t meant her to catch on fire and be so badly burned.

  “What’s the matter?” Selina drawled sleepily.

  “My wife is divorcing me,” he said.

  Selina sat up, no longer sleepy. “Divorcing you?” Her face beamed.

  “Yes,” he said, with a rough laugh. “You can marry me, if you like, when the divorce is final.”

  She wept for joy. It was the end of her particular rainbow, more than she’d ever dared to hope for. “Oh, David, I’ll be so good to you,” she whispered fervently. “So good.”