Trilby

by Diana Palmer

  “Thank God,” Thorn said.

  Naki shrugged, fingering the reins. “Perhaps it’s for the best that Alexandra didn’t come,” he said dully. “Blanco said that after the revolution, I could probably manage a ranch for one of the hacendados or even buy a place of my own. There isn’t so much prejudice in Mexico, except against highborn Spaniards and whites.” He looked up. “Unless I tell people I’m Apache, they don’t know.”

  Thorn studied the other man quietly. “And how long do you think you can ignore your heritage, deny your ancestry?”

  Naki groaned. He looked toward the horizon. “I can’t. I’m proud of what I am. I don’t try to hide it, even in Mexico, but there’s so little prejudice among the rebels. All of us are misfits. After the revolution, if we win, it won’t matter what race I am. Not in Mexico.” He turned to Thorn. “I love her!”

  The anguish in that deep voice touched Thorn’s very soul. “I know,” he said heavily. “But she wouldn’t want you to sacrifice your heritage. She accepts you as you are. She loves you as you are.”

  Naki turned back toward him. “Thorn, I could never live back East. And despite what she thinks, the reservation would destroy her. The only common ground possible is Mexico.”

  “Mexico is in the throes of revolution.”

  “I noticed,” the Apache said dryly.

  “Come in and visit for a while, at least,” Thorn said. “You can tell us what’s happening. Jorge is the only source we have for any news of the revolution.”

  Trilby, delighted to see that Thorn’s friend was very much alive, set an extra place at the table, and Naki filled them in on the latest developments.

  “Here in the north we have an able leader in Colonel Blanco, and there are others. There’s a game fellow named Arturo López who leads a contingent. They call him Red. I’m with his group right now.” He shook his head. “You can’t believe the diversity of our men. I’ve seen French Foreign Legionnaires, Germans, Dutch, and plenty of cowboys from Texas and Arizona and New Mexico. Even some Eastern dudes, among them a Harvard graduate.” He grinned, his teeth very white against his tan. “And rumor has it—” he leaned forward conspiratorially “—that there’s an Apache Indian in the fight!”

  “No!” Thorn exclaimed.

  “Who would believe that?” Trilby teased, smiling. “Will Madero win?”

  “Of course,” Naki replied. “Even so, I doubt that he will remain in power very long. He has a kind heart, but it takes much more than that to lead a country. It takes ruthlessness.”

  After they ate, Thorn walked his friend out to the barn, where his horse had been fed and watered for the journey back.

  “Are you sure you won’t spend the night?” Thorn asked.

  “I gave my word that I’d return by morning,” came the reply. Naki hesitated. “I act as translator when López isn’t available. I trust you to say nothing. There is a great battle in the offing. It would be wise to keep to the ranch for a while and go no nearer Douglas than this. I can say no more, and you must keep my confidence.”

  “I will. Thank you.” Thorn didn’t press the other man for information, but he wanted to. “What shall we tell Sissy when she writes?”

  Naki hesitated. He finished saddling his horse and adjusted the cinch strap again. “Tell her nothing,” he said finally, his face hard and resigned as he turned back to the other man. “Until the revolution is won or lost, it is best that she know nothing.”

  Thorn hesitated. Trilby had said that Sissy had sounded desperate for news in her last letter. Thinking Naki dead, she might very well do something drastic.

  “I hope McCollum can keep his mouth shut if Sissy asks him about you,” Thorn said heavily. “He means well, but women fluster him—especially upset women. What if he tells her the gossip about you?”

  “I can almost see what you think,” Naki remarked astutely. “But you underestimate Alexandra. I know how she feels, but she is too strong, too gritty, to take her own life. If someone tells her that I am no longer alive, she will survive the grief and be stronger for it. I know her.”

  “What if you’re wrong?” Thorn asked. “Can you live with it?”

  “Of course not,” came the quiet reply. “But I’m not wrong. Eventually, if I can cope with life in Mexico, I will tell her myself and give her the choice. If I cannot, it is best that she believes me dead. For her own sake.”

  “In your place, I don’t think I could be so noble,” Thorn replied. “I’d kill for Trilby. I’d die for her.”

  “I know. Have you told her?”

  Thorn laughed coldly. “She’s still in love with that Eastern fellow. She finds me acceptable now, but I don’t have her heart.”

  “Don’t lose hope,” Naki told him. “The Eastern fellow isn’t here. You are.”

  “I know. That’s my ace.” He shook hands with his friend. “Don’t get your guts shot out.”

  “Don’t sleep too soundly at night. You may have given up your Mexican lands, but your cattle are tempting to hungry men desperate to win a revolution. Keep both eyes open. Remember what I said about Douglas.”

  “I will. And thanks.”

  “De nada.”

  “Try to keep in touch, at least through Jorge’s relatives, couldn’t you?”

  Naki sat astride the horse, looking elegant and right at home. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Adios.”

  “Vaya con Dios,” came the soft reply. Naki turned his horse and rode away, a lonely silhouette against the sky.

  “BUT WHY WON’T he let us tell Sissy?” Trilby asked plaintively. “Doesn’t he know that it will kill her to think he’s dead?”

  “He knows. It’s for her sake that he doesn’t want to raise her hopes, only to have them dashed. It’s an incredible thing he’s trying to do, Trilby—giving up his country for love of a woman.”

  “Imagine a man willing to do that for a mere female,” she said softly, peeking up at him through her lashes.

  He smiled slowly. Samantha had already been put to bed. The house was quiet and empty of noise, except for the unusually loud ticktock of the grandfather clock in the hall.

  “I want you,” he said softly.

  Such plain speaking still had the power to frazzle Trilby’s nerves and make her blush like a bride. “Thorn!”

  “I know. I’m not quite civilized, am I?” he asked, moving close to her. He stopped when he was scant inches away, so close that she could feel the heat from his body, smell the tobacco and leather scent of his clothing. “I’m too rough and too Western for a gentlewoman like you.”

  “No, you aren’t,” she whispered, shivering. “I want you!”

  Her breath swept heavily from her lungs. She looked up at his shocked face with eyes that grew heated with slow passion. Her hands went to the neck of her dress and she began to unfasten it without taking her eyes from Thorn’s. She didn’t stop until she had it open all the way down the front. And while he watched, she peeled everything down to her waist and stood there, bare breasted, breathing as if she’d been running.

  “Oh, Trilby,” he whispered reverently.

  She reached up and took his face in her cold, nervous hands. She drew it gently toward her.

  “My darling,” he said under his breath, sliding his warm hands around her body to cradle her. “My darling.”

  Surely that was more than just passion in his deep voice! She yielded to the warm, moist touch of his lips as they explored her soft breasts, making the tips go hard and sensitive.

  He picked her up, with his mouth completely covering one soft breast, and walked quickly down the hall into their bedroom, pausing just long enough to lock the door.

  He carried her in the darkness to the bed and began to remove her clothing, but her hand stayed him.

  “Do you not want me?” he asked unsteadily, pausing.

  “Light the lamp,” she whispered. “I…want to watch you take me.”

  He groaned, fumbling for matches and almost up-ending the lamp
in his haste to get it lit. He turned to her, shaking with passion, devouring her body with his eyes.

  “Have I shocked you?” she whispered, propped on her elbows. “Am I—am I too forward?”

  “No, you are not,” he said huskily.

  He went to her, his mouth ardent as it found her lips and roughly caressed it. “Seduce me,” he breathed boldly against her ear as his hands went to the rest of the fastenings that secured her dress. “I will never taunt you with it, Trilby. Be as forward as you like. It delights me.”

  She moaned and gave way to her most outrageous impulses then, drowning in his masculinity and her own femininity. She touched him, whispered to him, adored him as she’d only ever dreamed of doing. He permitted her touch, encouraged it, his voice breaking as he told her what to do.

  When he moved over her, she was so desperate for him that her voice sobbed with every deep motion of his body as she clung to him and arched her hips to his in welcome.

  But he refused to be rushed. Each movement was calculated, deliberate, each kiss tender and soft and adoring. It was like no other time between them. His voice broke as he whispered to her that this possession was the deepest, most profound he’d ever shared with her. Even as the words embarrassed, they excited. He whispered that as deep as he was within her, he wanted an even closer melding….

  She cried out, because the words and the slow movement of his hips combined to produce a terrifying pinnacle of pleasure. She sobbed against his hard, warm mouth and wondered if she could survive the hot oblivion that actually cost her her consciousness for a few shuddering seconds.

  When her eyes opened, Thorn’s strained face was there. He had watched her all the way through it, gloried in her pleasure.

  “You saw it…?” she whispered breathlessly.

  “Yes. And now you will, Trilby,” he whispered back, his jaw clenching as he began to move. “Watch. I’ll let you… Watch, Trilby. Watch…watch…watch me!”

  He cried out, and she did watch, fascinated, as his neck muscles went taut and his head went back, his mouth opening in a hoarse shout of ecstasy. His body shuddered so violently that she caught her breath. And then he relaxed and his weight was heavy on her body, shivering in the aftermath.

  “Oh…my,” she said unsteadily, cradling him.

  “In the light,” he murmured in exhaustion. “And your eyes on me, and mine on you. I never dreamed of it.”

  “Nor I.” She held him possessively, protesting sharply when he sought to move. “Oh, no, please!” she whispered urgently.

  He lifted his head and looked into her misty eyes. “It is not possible….”

  “I know,” she said softly, searching his face. “I only want to feel you…like this.”

  He smiled with such tenderness that her heart ached; then his hands touched her face as he began to kiss it with soft wonder.

  “It was me that you wanted, wasn’t it?” she asked slowly.

  “I could ask you the same question,” he replied, lifting his head to look at her with solemnity. “Do you lie in my arms and think of the man you lost?”

  “It would not be possible,” she said after a minute. “Not when we lie together like this, in such intimacy.”

  He felt some of the tension go out of him. Under his body, hers was warm and soft, like silk. He traced her swollen mouth with a faintly unsteady hand. “With my seed deep inside you,” he breathed reverently, watching her color.

  “Yes,” she replied, despite her shyness.

  He bent and his mouth opened hers, probing delicately inside it. Within her, he stirred and began to swell. She made a sound, halfway between a whimper and a gasp.

  “I am capable again,” he whispered into her open mouth. “Are you?”

  “Yes…yes! Thorn…please!”

  He lifted and, as he moved down, he looked into her eyes. He thought, as the pleasure began to build all over again, that he saw eternity there….

  LIFE WAS VERY good for the next few days. Thorn could barely keep himself away from Trilby, who was radiant and happy in ways that everyone noticed.

  The only thing that marred their happiness was a note from Sissy, begging for any news that came of Naki. McCollum, it seemed, had been persuaded to tell her about Naki’s disappearance and possible death. Sissy was upset and obviously terribly depressed. Trilby had wanted to write back and tell her the truth. But Thorn had convinced her that it wasn’t Naki’s wish. He didn’t want Sissy to know. So she wrote her friend and pleaded with her not to give up hope. Even as she wrote it, she could feel the girl’s terror and pain. It was the only blight on her own radiant happiness with her husband. Until the next morning, when that joy turned to anguish.

  “I’VE NEVER SEEN my girl look so radiant,” Jack Lang remarked on one of his rare visits to the ranch the next day. He and Thorn were checking brands to make sure that none of Blackwater Springs’s cattle had ventured onto Los Santos property. It was roundup and tempers were usually fraught—especially Thorn’s. But this morning, he was even more testy and irritable than usual. He hardly spoke, and his eyes were as disturbed as his expression.

  “Haven’t you?” Thorn murmured in reply to Jack’s remark, and felt cold inside. Trilby did look radiant, but only he knew what the reason might be, and it made him cold all over.

  “Is there a particular reason for that radiance I saw in her face when we left the ranch this morning?” the older man probed gently.

  Thorn’s jaw clenched. “If you mean, is she pregnant,” he said shortly, “that isn’t why she was smiling.”

  “I would hardly have been so blunt,” Jack said stiffly. “I hope that she is as content as she seems. You got off to a rocky start. Trilby had to change some old attitudes, you know. She was raised in a very genteel environment. It was difficult for her to adjust to life out here.” He swept his hand across the vista before them.

  “I think she manages very well,” Thorn said. He didn’t mention that something that had happened this very morning had terrified him. Their intimacy had been complete and almost painfully sweet. Thorn had never known such happiness. But even as he savored his wife and the joy she brought him, he had begun to brood over the past and the way he’d seduced her into marriage. He would never know if her reasons for marrying him, and staying with him, had any basis except for propriety’s sake.

  She was wild in his arms, wanton and abandoned, but she never spoke of love. Neither did he, despite the effort it cost him. He didn’t dare let her know how much he loved her, for fear of giving her the ultimate weapon to use against him if things ever went bad between them again.

  Now it seemed he had cause for his lack of trust. Bates had written to her. He’d seen the letter only this morning, where she must have left it lying on the hall table.

  Richard Bates wrote of the great change in his mode of living. He was no longer traveling around Europe. In fact, he’d taken a job in the local bank. He groaned inwardly as he remembered what else the man had written, words that threatened to destroy his very soul.

  “You’re very quiet today,” Jack remarked.

  “He wrote to her. Bates, that is. He has taken a job in a bank.”

  “Dick? My God, a miracle.”

  Thorn looked at Jack Lang levelly. “Trilby loved him once. Does she still, do you think?”

  Jack’s face went ruddy. “What a hell of a question!”

  “I have to know!” Thorn said roughly.

  “Why don’t you ask her?”

  “Because she won’t talk to me,” he said heavily. “Not about that, at least. She won’t speak of him.”

  “She was infatuated with him,” Jack said after a minute. “I’m not sure it was ever more than that, really. Puppy love, don’t you see?”

  “I think that perhaps he didn’t know how he felt about her until she married me,” Thorn said. “If he discovered that he had feelings for her, perhaps he has changed his way of life in an attempt to make her see him as a better person.”

  “Bu
t Trilby’s happy with you.”

  “She could be making the most of her situation,” Thorn said stubbornly. He even thought privately that her ardor was almost exclusively a result of her desire for a child. She might think that a child would keep her content as she made a life for herself without the man she really loved.

  “She must love you.”

  “Must she? Why?” Thorn asked, glancing at Jack. “I have considered offering her a divorce,” he said, shocking his father-in-law speechless.

  “A divorce? Why?”

  “If she would be happier with Bates, how can I force her to stay with me?” he asked bitterly, hating the memory of seeing it, hating the words he’d read. Trilby had left it on the hall table, and he’d found it and read it. Afterward, he’d replaced it so that she wouldn’t know, and he’d left the house without a word to her.

  “What was in that letter, Thorn?” Jack asked worriedly.

  Thorn smoothed his palms over the saddle horn and stared into space with an aching heart. “He said that he had a good job and excellent prospects. That he realized only too late how much he loved her. He wants her to leave me and marry him. He says that she will be much happier in her own environment, where she won’t have to suffer deprivation with a…savage like me.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “SURELY YOU’RE MISTAKEN…?” Jack began.

  “I’m not. I read the letter twice. She didn’t tell me about it,” he added. That was what had hurt most. “She didn’t mention it at all.”

  “But she would hardly have left it in plain view if she had minded your seeing it,” Jack protested.

  “Wouldn’t she? Perhaps she thought it was the kindest way to tell me that she wanted to leave.”

  That was possible. Jack was lost for words. Thorn was quite obviously crushed, despite the brave face he was putting on. He felt sorry for the man, for the first time in memory.