Trilby

by Diana Palmer

  He did. It only made his need worse. Unbearable. His lean hands caught her shoulders and bit in. “Trilby, I can’t make you stay with me if you aren’t happy. Bates loves you….”

  “No, he doesn’t. He loves himself. But I love you,” she said, with total contentment. She lifted her eyes to his white face.

  That was what she’d been saying all along, and he’d never realized it. He moaned softly and bent to kiss her eyelids shut. “Oh, God!” he whispered hoarsely.

  “You truly didn’t know, did you?” she asked, tightening her hold on him.

  “No! How could I? You seemed to want me, but I thought you were only making the most of our marriage. And when you asked me for a child,” he said unsteadily, “I thought you only wanted to make the best of a bad situation.”

  “I wanted to give you a child because I love you,” she said, smiling against his broad chest. “Thorn,” she whispered, caressing his chest softly. “I’m carrying your baby.”

  He was still. His body went rigid in her arms. “You are…what?” he asked, choking.

  “I am with child,” she repeated. There was no chance at all that she was making the most of a bad situation, he thought dazedly, not with that radiance in her face.

  Then he remembered the night before he’d left for Tucson. He made a rough sound. “You are carrying my child…and I took you…like that?” He groaned, terrified. “My God, Trilby! My God, I could have hurt you so badly! And the baby…” He sounded frantic.

  She soothed him, putting her hand over his mouth and caressing it, gentling him. “Thorn, it’s all right. You didn’t harm either of us. Listen to me, please. I’m all right.”

  He shook. Moisture stung his eyes. “Trilby, I’m sorry.”

  She pressed into his body, clinging. “I love you,” she said fervently. “And you love me. There is nothing to forgive. I hurt you, without meaning to. You were only trying to show me what you felt, but I didn’t understand. Now I do. Thorn, you’re my life!” she whispered.

  He shuddered. His arms gathered her close and still he shuddered, washed in terror as he realized what he could have cost them both with his violent ardor.

  “Oh, my darling,” she said softly, “please don’t be like this. I promise you, no harm came to me or to our child.”

  “Never again,” he said, choking. “I’ll never touch you like that again!”

  “Yes, you will, when I’m properly fit again, because the way we are with each other is passionate and wild and glorious.” She reached up and kissed his hard mouth hungrily. “I adore you,” she breathed. “Adore you, worship you…”

  Her soft kisses melted his pain. He gathered her up and kissed her slowly, until kissing was no longer enough. He groaned with the fever that throbbed inside him.

  “Ahem.”

  The dry tone diverted them. They looked toward the doorway, where Naki was poised.

  “Excuse me, but are you both deaf?”

  Thorn frowned. As sanity returned, he heard sharp reports and there was suddenly a whizzing sound close by, followed by a hard thud.

  “Do you hear that? Guns? Firing guns? Ricocheting bullets?” Naki prompted. “Pistols and rifles and that damned cannon they captured? If you both don’t want to be impaled by a bullet, it might be a dandy idea to get in out of the line of fire.”

  “Why didn’t you say something, damn it?” Thorn raged, herding Trilby into the car. “She’s having a baby!”

  “Yes, I know.” Naki grinned. “Everyone knows. We’ve been taking turns guarding her. Juan over there thinks he’s in love.”

  Thorn glared at the smiling little man. “He can go kiss his horse. She’s mine.”

  “I’ll tell him— Get down!”

  He shoved them gently, urgently, to the floor as glass shattered all around them.

  “I do believe,” Naki murmured, with his lips inches from the floor, “that it’s going to be a very long day.”

  IT WAS. BY AFTERNOON, they were all worn out with nerves and lack of sleep. But the shooting had finally stopped, and according to the reports they were getting, a force of Federales was on its way to Agua Prieta. There would surely be more fighting soon. Hell was poised all around them, waiting for the chance to break loose.

  She didn’t know Red López on sight, but Juan pointed him out in the distance. She had expected the local hero of the revolution to be tall and handsome and dashing, like someone out of a dime novel. But he was rather ordinary-looking, with a ready smile for his men and an unhurried, polite manner when he was introduced later in the day to Trilby. Nobody could have looked less like an officer. But like so many of the rebel officers, he had a sharp mind and a sense of strategy and tactics. He was like a mosquito, biting and running, biting and running. His very elusiveness gave him an edge against the enemy.

  The general who had first spoken with Trilby came back to speak to the small group of Americans shortly thereafter. “We must return you to Los Estados Unidos,” he told them. “But it will require caution, because your captain across the border has sworn to make prisoners of war of any insurrectos he catches on American soil. It is a dangerous situation.”

  Trilby smiled. “I find that I am getting used to danger, sir.”

  Thorn was so proud of her that he could barely contain himself. His gentle, sheltered Trilby had changed overnight, blossomed into a pioneer woman. He all but shook, just looking at her.

  “My wife is with child,” Thorn told the general, his voice deep and worried.

  “As Juan said a moment ago,” the general replied, sweeping off his hat to bow gallantly to Trilby. “Felicidades, señora,” he added, with a smile. “And it will be my pleasure to escort you to the border.”

  “You are a gentleman, señor,” she said, and smiled back.

  “I will regret your loss, you know,” he said surprisingly. “You have become one of my best medics. Who will take care of my poor men?”

  “The hospitals across the border,” Jack Lang volunteered. “There are makeshift clinics everywhere—and plenty of people to look after the wounded and dying. They’ll take rebels, Federals, anyone.”

  The general nodded. “That is as it should be.” He signaled to Juan, and, minutes later, after Trilby had wished the small doctor a gentle goodbye, they were on their way to the customhouse.

  The general escorted them past the line of rebels along the embankment of the border under a flag of truce. The Mexican rebel general saluted the American army captain in charge there, who returned the salute with proper respect and walked back to his men. Jack Lang gave a sigh of relief.

  “Thank God,” he said. “American soil!”

  “Yes,” Thorn said, hugging Trilby close. “Thank God indeed. Naki, aren’t you coming?” he asked when Naki stayed just over the line, watching the American officer approach.

  The Apache shook his head with a slow smile. “I am becoming part of the revolution, my friend. My people lost their bid for freedom, but these people still have a chance. Many of us who are non-Mexicans are fighting for their cause. I cannot desert them now, when we are so close to claiming victory.”

  “But what about Sissy?” Trilby asked sadly.

  Naki’s face hardened. “Tell her nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “McCollum told her you were here,” she said, with anguish. “She thinks you’re dead!”

  Naki’s dark eyes closed and a shiver went through his tall body. “So be it, then,” he said hoarsely. “It is for the best.”

  “She loves you.”

  Naki’s eyes opened and in them was the purest hell Trilby had ever seen. “I know,” he said fiercely. “How I know!”

  “She would give up everything.”

  “As I would. As I have,” Naki said quietly. He managed a grim smile. “When this is over, perhaps there will be a way.”

  Trilby didn’t argue. She had no right to tell the man how to live his life. She hurt for him, for Sissy.

  “Take care of yourself,” Thorn told him. �
�Don’t get killed down here.”

  “I promise to try. Vaya con Dios.”

  “Yes. And you.”

  Naki waved and went back to join the others across the border, looking much more like a revolutionary soldier than a misplaced Apache.

  Thorn, Jack, and Trilby continued on and were immediately surrounded by reporters and an angry American officer as they gained the American lines.

  Thorn saw a way out and held up his hand. “Later, please,” he said. “My wife is in a delicate condition. She feels faint and I must get her home.”

  That set the men, who were gentlemen, into a protective attitude, and Trilby was rushed to Jack Lang’s car through the crowd.

  “Did the greaser devils harm her?” one man blustered as they reached the car.

  Trilby stopped dead and glared at the man. “They are Mexican rebel soldiers, not ‘greasers.’ Neither are they devils. In fact, my treatment at their hands was much more gentlemanly than it might be at the hands of any American man in the same situation, I daresay!”

  The man cleared his throat and belatedly removed his hat.

  “Idiot,” Trilby said—loud enough for her voice to carry. She clasped Thorn’s hand in hers as he closed the door behind them. “‘Greasers,’ indeed!”

  Thorn glanced at Jack Lang and smiled indulgently. After promising the American officer as many details as he could remember once Trilby was safely home, they left town in a roar of yellow dust.

  AGUA PRIETA BELONGED to the Maderistas for only a few days. Three of the rebel leaders surrendered to U.S. troops, and when a column of twelve thousand Federales, under the command of Col. Reynaldo Díaz, marched into Agua Prieta, they found the trenches deserted and the city looted. The siege was over. Fortunately for both nations, intervention and war were averted.

  Shortly after the Federales retook Agua Prieta, two Maderista rebel officers, Francisco “Pancho” Villa and Pascual Orozco, led their forces against Juárez. Juárez fell, and Madero took office as president of Mexico. The rebels celebrated, and so did the others who had fought for Madero.

  Red López died tragically not too long after the battle for Agua Prieta. It was noted in a newspaper story before the siege of Agua Prieta that while being interviewed he had given his bed to a reporter and slept on the floor. Possibly many of the unflattering things said about him were true, but Trilby, who had met him and heard about him from his own men, thought that he must have had some saving graces to inspire such devotion in his followers.

  López was gone, but Orozco and Obregón and Villa and Zapata and many other rebel leaders were alive and heady with victory. The fiestas went on for days and days, even along the American side of the border. The first phase of the Mexican revolution ended on May 26, 1911, with the resignation and departure of Porfirio Díaz. Another election was held in November of the same year and Francisco Madero became president.

  Trilby, rested and in the bosom of her family, was making a dress for Samantha and enjoying the renewal of her marriage. She and Thorn grew closer every day. There were no more doubts, no more sorrows. They loved, and their child ripened in Trilby’s body as the days grew longer and hotter with the end of summer. There were no more secrets and no more uncertainties. When Thorn looked at his wife, the love in her eyes all but blinded him. He felt more like a king than a savage these days.

  He told her so.

  She laughed and reached up to kiss him tenderly. “The only savage thing about you, my darling, is the way you love me,” she whispered. “And I hope that never changes.”

  He smiled against her welcoming lips. As he kissed her, he whispered back that it never would.

  JORGE IMPROVED AND came home to resume his duties at Los Santos. Sissy wrote regularly to Trilby, but her letters were sad and brief, and she never mentioned Naki. Nor did Trilby. There had been rumors, as there always were, that Naki had been one of the American rebel prisoners executed in Mexico. They had no word from him at Los Santos, and even Thorn had begun to believe he was really dead.

  Fall came to Louisiana as well as Arizona. Alexandra Bates was sipping tea with her mother in the parlor when the maid announced a gentleman caller.

  “That Harrow fellow again, I fear,” Mrs. Bates said, with resignation and a wistful smile at Sissy. “We will have to have him shot, Sissy, or he won’t go away. Well, show him in,” she told the maid, who curtsied and went out. “Why does your father have to go off on these hunting trips and leave me to field your persistent suitors!”

  Sissy smiled, but not with much enthusiasm. She was still mourning Naki. Over the months, her spirit had dwindled and she took little interest in anything. She had given up her studies, almost life itself. Richard had grown up, changed for the better, and had become engaged to a kind, sweet girl. Ben had gone to Texas, of all places, to become a Texas Ranger. Sissy was the only sibling still living at home. She wondered if she would ever be able to feel again. The Mr. Harrow to whom her mother referred was a widower who had taken a shine to Sissy, much against her wishes. She grew fatigued with finding ways to avoid him. She wanted only one man, and he was dead. She’d mourned him forever, it sometimes seemed.

  Mrs. Bates greeted the caller before Sissy saw him. It was definitely not Mr. Harrow. This man was tall and elegantly dressed. He had a faintly Continental look, as a Frenchman would have, with black hair neatly cut and combed and eyes like liquid black pearls. He was incredibly handsome and refined, and the suit he wore was as immaculate as his highly polished black boots.

  “Mrs. Bates?” he asked the elder woman, smiling. “I was told that I might find Alexandra here. Ah, yes. There you are!” he added, glancing past the older woman to where Sissy sat on the upholstered sofa.

  Alexandra Bates, in her dark dress, sat and stared at him from a face that grew whiter and whiter, until not a drop of blood was left in it.

  “Look out, she’s going to faint!” Mrs. Bates exclaimed, shocked.

  Naki leaped forward to catch her, his powerful body easily absorbing her weight. Her thinness tore at his heart.

  He laid her gently on the sofa, and Mrs. Bates, fluttering, called for the maid and sent her for smelling salts.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, what’s wrong with her?” Mrs. Bates moaned worriedly.

  “Does she have these spells often?” Naki asked, his eyes clinging hungrily to Sissy’s beloved, unconscious face.

  “No. But she hasn’t been the same since she came home from Arizona months ago. She’s mourned that man…” She remembered that she had a guest, a stranger, and stopped speaking. She smiled. “It’s of no importance. You haven’t yet introduced yourself, young man.”

  “Haven’t I?” he murmured absently, because she was stirring now. He possessed Alexandra’s soft little hand and held it tightly. His fine dark eyes searched her face. “Sissy,” he called gently.

  She opened her eyes and they dilated. She shivered. “You’re dead!” she whispered brokenly. “Naki, you’re dead, you’re dead!”

  “No,” he whispered tenderly, smiling. “How could I die and leave you behind?”

  “Naki!” Her voice ripped with emotion. She held out her arms, and was lifted and cradled fiercely against his heart. His eyes closed. He rocked her, his arms enfolding her a little roughly as the months of loneliness boiled over, the emotion on his smooth features evident even to a blind woman, which Mrs. Bates quite definitely was not.

  “Well,” she said, clasping her hands before her as realization set in. She smiled. “I must say, young man, you are nothing like the mental picture I had of you.”

  He looked at her over Sissy’s dark head with a soft, slow smile. “I daresay you expected feathers and war paint?”

  Mrs. Bates chuckled. “Exactly. Do you like tea?”

  “With plenty of ice,” he said, “if you please. Mexico is short of that particular commodity.”

  While Mrs. Bates left discreetly to supervise a tray for them, Naki helped Sissy into a sitting position and searched her radian
t face warmly.

  “I had a few close calls, but I’m all right. I’ve earned some land of my own, Alexandra. I bought a tract of it near Cancún,” he said, without preamble. “It will be foreign to us both, I’m afraid, but we can live there in peace and without prejudice. I will always be Apache, and I have no intention of hiding my race or denying my pride in it. But heritage doesn’t depend on geography. I can be an Apache in Mexico as well as I can in Arizona.”

  “You’d be giving up everything!” she protested weakly.

  “Not quite,” he replied quietly. “But the alternative is to either take you to the reservation, where you would suffer the prejudice, or try to live in a white world and suffer it myself. I think Mexico is our only choice.” He searched her eyes hungrily. “You have to decide if sharing my life is worth giving up your home and your way of life.”

  Her eyes registered the enormity of what he was telling her. She smiled and went soft in his arms. “What a small thing to sacrifice, when I would gladly give up my life to stay with you,” she said simply.

  His eyes closed. It was profound, this feeling. More profound than anything he’d ever known. In his mind, he could picture Alexandra in his arms on tropical nights, the thunder and lightning crashing while he made himself master of her soft, virginal body. He shivered with the thought of the ecstasy they would share. He looked at her and thought that such a dream would be worth anything. Even, as she had said, life itself.

  “Yes,” he said huskily. “I feel just as deeply for you. Shall we risk it?”

  She smiled and shook her head. “There will be no risk.” She reached up and put her mouth hungrily against his.

  “Even with love like this on both sides, it will not be easy.” He tried to speak through her kisses.

  She smiled and kissed him harder. “I want children after we’re married,” she said solemnly. She put her hand over his mouth when he began to protest. “I want lots and lots of children,” she said again, each word measured and firm.

  He sighed. “Alexandra, we have spoken of this mixing of races—”