by Diana Palmer
“At the risk of losing her child, her husband, her reputation?” He laughed curtly. “I seem to have been living in a dreamworld. Are people ever what they seem?”
“I don’t suppose they are,” she said sadly, thinking of Richard and how madly she’d loved him, only to find him with feet of clay. She looked up at him. “Will you get me a tree?”
He didn’t reply for a moment. Those soft gray eyes made his knees go weak. He loved the exquisite tenderness in them, the way her long lashes curled up from them. He found himself smiling wistfully. “What kind do you want?” he asked softly.
She tingled all over from the way he was looking at her. “Not a paloverde,” she whispered.
“All right.” He bent and brushed his mouth, very gently, against her forehead. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of Curt.”
He’d gone before she could tell him what kind of tree she wanted. He came back with a straggly piñon pine. It was a scruffy little thing, although the homemade decorations Trilby and Samantha put on it helped its homeliness.
TRILBY BAKED AND Samantha decorated confections and cakes. By Christmas Day, they had a delightful array of baked goods to give to the employees’ families, as well as some to eat for themselves.
At the table, they all dressed in their Sunday best and Thorn carved the delicately browned turkey Trilby had made.
“Isn’t it lovely, Father?” Samantha asked shyly. “I helped.”
“You certainly did,” Trilby agreed, smiling at her. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
Thorn glanced at his daughter. She openly adored Trilby, who was gentle and kind and warm with her. All the things, in fact, that she wasn’t with him. She’d avoided him since she’d made her soft confession. He wondered sometimes if he’d dreamed the two nights they’d had together.
It wouldn’t do to look back, he told himself. She was missing her Richard, and he was trying to work himself into the grave to keep from going to her one dark night. It was difficult to keep his head.
He hadn’t kept it with Curt. He’d found the man at home and knocked him down, to his wife’s astonishment. He hadn’t explained, hadn’t said a word. But Curt knew; it was in his eyes. He hadn’t retaliated. Thorn had left him lying on the floor without a word, and Curt didn’t have to be told that his favorite relation would no longer welcome him at Los Santos.
But the hardest thing of all was coming face-to-face with what a fool he’d been. He’d never suspected Sally of infidelity, and all the time she’d been pushing him out of her bed, she’d been pulling Curt into it. The knowledge did something terrible to his ego, to his self-confidence. In the beginning, Sally had cared for him, as he had for her. Now he wondered if he could ever trust his own judgment again. Samantha had paid a high price for his blindness. He wondered if she ever blamed him for the pain she’d endured at her mother’s hands. He wished he could ask her.
“Father, you’re not eating,” Samantha said shyly.
“What? No, I suppose I’m not.” He tasted his turkey and smiled at Samantha. “It’s very good.”
“Thank you,” Trilby murmured shyly.
He didn’t reply. After they finished eating, he leaned back and rolled and lit a cigarette. “McCollum may come a little sooner than expected to do some digging,” he said.
“Your archaeologist friend?” Trilby asked carefully.
“Yes. He’ll be bringing a few students with him. They can stay in the bunkhouse.”
“Is Sissy coming with the group?” Trilby asked. “She hasn’t mentioned it in her letters, and she won’t actually be in his class until January. Will he let her come anyway?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.” He stared at her. “You liked him, didn’t you?” he added, with a cold laugh. “He’s civilized.”
He got to his feet and smiled at Samantha on his way out.
Trilby looked up at him, but he didn’t meet her eyes. He’d been a fool once already. He wasn’t risking his heart again, not when she was sitting there pining for that damned blond fellow back East.
THEY OPENED THEIR presents that evening. Trilby had made a lacy, ruffled yellow dress for Samantha, who adored it. For Thorn, there was a silk tie in a subdued blue paisley that she’d made by hand.
He, in turn, gave his daughter a new store-bought doll with blond hair, a china tea set, and a tiddleywinks game. He presented Trilby with a music box. That night they sat in the living room with the candles lit on the Christmas tree and were serenaded by several guitar-playing Mexican cowboys.
It was almost idyllic, except that Trilby missed her own family, where Christmas had been such a happy and boisterous affair with the extended family gathered all around back in New Orleans. By comparison, this was a sad and lonely affair. She telephoned her parents that night and it brightened her smile when they said they’d be over the next day to see them. At least it wouldn’t be quite so lonely then.
Trilby wished them good-night at bedtime and carried the little music box to her room. It was round and made of wood, with a beautiful green and gold pattern on it. Inside it was a place to keep loose powder. She turned the key and listened with rapt delight to the Viennese waltz it played.
A rough knock at the door made her turn. Thorn came stiffly into the room, pausing just inside the door.
“I wanted to thank you for making Christmas so enjoyable for Samantha,” he told her. “She hadn’t had much in the way of attention for some time. She enjoyed tonight.”
“So did I,” she said quietly.
He had, too, but he couldn’t admit that without giving away feelings he didn’t want to admit he had. “I’ll be away for a few days,” he stated abruptly. “It’s unavoidable. I have to go down into Mexico and make some arrangements about my holdings there. It’s getting too dangerous to try to hold on to the hacienda.”
“My parents and Teddy are coming over tomorrow,” she said slowly. “You…won’t stay just until then?”
“There’s no point,” he said curtly, thinking how difficult it would be to see Trilby laugh and smile with her people when she resembled a prisoner in his house.
Her eyes became dull and she looked everywhere except at him. “I see,” she whispered. “I’ll give them your best, then.”
Her calm manner infuriated him. “You’re so damned proper, Trilby!” he said through his teeth. “Just once, I’d love to see you snarling and spitting.”
“I was raised to behave properly,” she said defensively.
“Yes, like that anemic city boy you love,” he replied coldly. “God knows what you saw in each other. You’re both so proper that you probably couldn’t even manage to make love. You’d be fumbling to get the lights out and undress in the dark, so that you wouldn’t embarrass each other.”
“At least he isn’t a savage!” she cried.
His face hardened at the charge. “There are times when you don’t mind that. In fact,” he said harshly, “there are times when you love it!”
She picked up the music box and hurled it at him in a humiliated rage. It hit the wall and split open, falling noisily to the floor.
Her wide, tragic eyes stared at him out of a white face. “How dare you treat me like this?” she said, choking. “Like a common woman of the night!”
“God, how I wish you were,” he spat out. “A lady of the evening has the advantage of being honest about what she feels and thinks and does. You’re so starchy that no real man could get near you. Richard Bates was just your style, Trilby. I’m damned sorry that I lost my head and forced us into this marriage. I regret it more than you’ll ever know.”
He looked at the music box, lying there shattered. He’d shopped for it himself, tried to find something that Trilby would like, something that belonged to her world, her kind of life. And this was how she felt about a present he’d given her. It was trash to her. Nothing but trash.
With a violent kick, he sent it back into the wall, totally destroying it. He glanced at her with ra
ge in his whole posture before he went out the door and slammed it behind him.
Trilby picked up the broken music box with cold, trembling hands and began to cry. It had been so beautiful, the kind of gift she’d never imagined a rough man like Thorn would ever give her. It had been a sensitive, thoughtful present, and she’d broken it beyond repair.
Until she saw it on the floor, she hadn’t realized the care Thorn had taken with her present. Now she did, and she bitterly regretted the argument that had widened the distance between them. It looked as if there would never be a way to breach it.
Her parents and Teddy came over the next day, and she enjoyed their visit. But Thorn had left before dawn that morning, without a single word to her. Despite her pleasure in her family, she missed Thorn and it showed.
“He’ll be back soon, darling,” Mary Lang told her, smiling, unaware of her daughter’s plight. “Are you happy?”
“Of course,” Trilby said, smiling back. “Come on. Do let’s have some coffee and I’ll read you Sissy’s last letter.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THORN CAME BACK even more taciturn than when he’d left. Trilby apologized for the music box, but he hardly seemed to hear her, and after that he openly avoided her.
Trilby mourned what might have been. She often tried to gather enough courage to go to him and explain all that had happened, but she never could gather enough nerve. New Year’s passed and winter came suddenly, blowing snow and freezing cold.
The fighting in Mexico was still fierce and more troops had been slung along the border. Two days before Christmas, insurgents had captured a train near Juárez, and the passengers had been marooned along the tracks. Bridges had been blown up and tracks dynamited, and rebels were preventing repairs. An engine and a car had been stolen at Guzman. Insurrecto chieftain Pascual Orozco had just seized a train in Chihuahua and noted that a hundred and fifty insurrectos had been killed.
With the beginning of February, a small detachment of soldiers was sent to San Bernardino to guard the border, and rumors were flying that Orozco was going to attack Juárez. There were three rebel leaders now, all becoming quite well known to people around Douglas. There were Bracamento and Cabral, and best known locally one Arturo “Red” López, who spoke perfect English and often acted as interpreter. Col. José Blanco was right-hand man for the revolutionary forces in Chihuahua. He had had a rift with Orozco and was now the most talked-about overall leader in the rebel camps. It was rumored that several Americans were fighting with the rebels under López, and Thorn was certain that one of the men was Naki, who had vanished abruptly from the ranch after Sissy’s departure. Trilby hoped he was wrong. It would kill Sissy if Naki were hurt.
They kept close to home, because incidents near the border became frightening now that twenty thousand U.S. troops had been ordered to patrol the entire border of Mexico from Texas to Arizona and the oceans at either end. It was the most extensive movement of troops and vessels of war ever assembled in time of peace in the United States. Rumors of war with Mexico were flying wildly, although President Taft had assured ailing President Díaz that the rumors were groundless. Nevertheless, despite the public announcement that the U.S. troops were performing “maneuvers” along the border, ranchers and townspeople alike were keeping loaded guns near to hand and saying their prayers. Church membership rose.
March brought more news of conflict. Trilby and Samantha busied themselves with sewing and cleaning, while Thorn worried over raids on his cattle, accounts and bookkeeping, and helped his men repair outbuildings in preparation for the coming spring planting and calving.
He’d already sold his Mexican land. But the situation in Agua Prieta suddenly exploded with the advent of an insurrecto force led by “Red” López at the gates of Agua Prieta, which was just over the border from Douglas. However, the rebels backed off and, almost simultaneously, there were reports that Madero was wounded in a fight in Chihuahua. Díaz invoked the death penalty against the lawless in Mexico in a last-ditch effort to suppress the rebellion.
Fifteen Americans had been captured at Casas Grandes, the newspaper announced, and they were feared shot following Díaz’s threat to put all insurrectos to death. Thorn had cursed when he read the news and gone immediately to telephone as many prestigious people as he knew in Washington—and there were a few—to make inquiries. President Taft had asked Madero to inquire about the fate of the captives, but there was still no word about their identities.
McCollum had telephoned Thorn after the abortive Agua Prieta threat, and Thorn had persuaded him not to come until April, when the visit might be safer. Trilby was vaguely disappointed, because she’d hoped that Sissy might come with the group and the visit might make her life a little easier. Thorn was alternately hostile and sarcastic. They barely spoke at all, and never touched.
Trilby fell into a sad, silent routine and the happy sparkle left her eyes. She’d long since discovered that she wasn’t pregnant. She was disappointed, but she knew it was for the best. Considering her relationship with Thorn, a child would have a difficult time of it. Thorn hadn’t said a word when she told him. His face had been without expression at all, and if she was hoping for a reaction, she was disappointed. He hardly spoke to her after that, unless he had to.
Meanwhile she was gaining ground with Samantha. The child had a quick mind and she enjoyed her studies. Now that the weather was warmer, they sat on the porch swing on days when the wind was low and went over lessons.
In a way, it was one of the happiest times of Trilby’s life. She was in control of the house and she had Samantha for company. There were times when she could forget for an hour that she’d once lain in Thorn’s strong arms and thrilled to his kisses and his touch. These days, he never looked at her. He sometimes ate and slept in the bunkhouse during particularly bad times when the cattle had to be rounded up and branded and closely watched against rustlers.
During the winter, there had been fewer raids. But once spring began to lighten the paloverde trees and the grass, and the weather became hot, raids increased.
Certainly the army units stationed at Douglas had stepped up their patrols all along the border, and incidents of violence increased. Col. David Morris had kept a careful eye on the situation and was ready to back up the Douglas troops again if necessary.
LISA MORRIS HAD obtained her divorce, and Dr. Powell now called on her regularly. There was no hint of impropriety. She never saw him alone. But Lisa knew very well how the doctor felt about her, and her delight in his company was obvious to Mrs. Moye.
“My divorce is final, you know,” Lisa told Dr. Powell. She was oddly stiff with him these days. Strange, when she’d been more intimate with him in some ways than she’d ever been with her husband.
“Yes, I know.” He leaned back in his chair and stared at her bluntly. “Your husband apparently has plans to marry his woman in Douglas. At least, that’s the talk around the post.”
“I hope he will be happy with her,” she said quietly.
“Has he been in touch with you?”
“Through his attorney,” she replied. “Just to make it clear that he is willing to pay the fees, also. I thought that was kind.”
“Considering the pain he’s caused you, it was his due.”
She noticed the anger in his deep voice and it made her feel warm inside. He hadn’t mentioned the future, not once. She wondered if he might be having second thoughts; he was still very reticent, even after she’d deliberately and brazenly emphasized her newly single state.
“You know that I was married,” he said. “That my wife and son were killed by Apaches.”
“Yes.”
He averted his eyes and ran his hat through his big, lean hands. “I have been dead inside for some time. I have not wanted…involvement.”
She clasped her folded hands tightly. Her heart sank. She must have misread his intentions completely. “Of course,” she said in a dull, softly wounded tone.
His shaggy head lifted,
and the blue eyes that met hers were like lightning striking. “But I want it now,” he said levelly. “I want it damned bad, madam!”
She flushed from the force of feeling that was in his voice. Her wide eyes searched his in the static silence that followed the blunt declaration.
He got to his feet a little clumsily. “That could have been better said. I have no manners. I beg your pardon.”
She stood up, too. “There is no need for that,” she said, lifting her bright, happy eyes to his. “I am…delighted…that you—that you…”
He moved a little closer, wary of the open door and Mrs. Moye somewhere beyond it. The proprieties were always observed here.
“Oh, Lisa!” he said huskily, his fierce eyes worshiping her. “I want so much more than words. So much more!”
Her breath caught. She looked at him with trembling need, her eyes and face radiant with it, her legs trembling.
His hand crushed the brim of his khaki hat and he muttered something under his breath as he fought valiantly against the need to drag her into his arms and kiss her mouth until it was red and swollen. “I must go!” he said roughly. “I have to join the detachment in Douglas. You know there’s been some trouble down there. We are wary of relaxing our guard.”
She felt the hunger he couldn’t hide, and she shifted her eyes to the wall. “Yes, I know. Oh, Todd, you will be careful?” she whispered worriedly, her eyes wide and troubled as they met his.
The soft query made him stiffen with pleasure. He looked suddenly wild. His face was livid with repressed desire. His blue eyes fastened on her bodice for so long that she felt her breasts swell. He saw the peaks forming and he groaned.
She quickly folded her arms over them, apprehensive.
He caught her hand in his and lifted it hungrily to his mouth. “Yes. I will be careful. It is good of you to…concern yourself on my account. Good day…Mrs. Morris,” he said in an unnaturally choked tone. None of this was what he wanted to say. Damn convention!