Susan Johnson (29 page)

“You really need help with the children,” he said. His statement was circumlocutional, but Empress didn’t know, and she thanked her stars she hadn’t blurted out her passionate feelings for him.

“And I appreciate your help,” she replied politely, melancholy overwhelming her. Trey Braddock-Black was a womanizer, and she was a fool to forget it. He adored females but not on a permanent basis, and only silly tyros thought otherwise.

He caught the coolness in her tone. “I didn’t mean that,” he said, only adding to the vague confusion.

“Really, Trey, you don’t have to help. I don’t expect you to feel any obligation to my—”

“Oh, hell,” he said tersely, dropping her hand and standing abruptly. Striding over to the window, he braced his palms on the oak molding and moodily stared out at the winter landscape.

“I appreciate everything you’ve done for me and my family,” Empress said quietly. “But you mustn’t feel any responsibility, and just as soon as I’m feeling better, we’ll go back up to Winter Mountain.”

“It’s not responsibility I feel,” Trey said, his back rigid, disturbed by the knowledge that Empress could walk out of his life the next day.

“And you shouldn’t.” Empress curbed her pain, forcing out the required courtesies. She was a dreamer to think she was any different from the scores of amorously devoted women in Trey’s past. “I’ll be back on my feet in a few days, then we’ll no longer abuse your hospitality.”

Pushing away from the window, Trey turned back to her in an abrupt, restless motion. “Damn, I’m not good at this,” he said curtly.

Oh, God. How could this be happening, her wanting him so, when every word he spoke was coolly opposite from her own feelings? Gazing at the severity of his expression, the tense conformation of his figure silhouetted against the window, she called on her reserves of pride and calmly answered, “I understand. No one expects you to—”

“I’ve never even thought of this before,” he said as if she hadn’t spoken. “I fact, I’ve seriously avoided it.”

Empress didn’t want to hear any more. Whatever he was about to say was going to hurt her. “Trey, really, you needn’t—”

“And it doesn’t have anything to do with the children,” he went on, seemingly oblivious to her response, a slightly forbidding quality to his tone. “Although,” he added quickly, as if his words were being played back with a three-second time lag and he’d only realized the austerity of his voice, “I like them very much,” he finished with a kind civility. He seemed to come back from an interior focus, and in the next moment he saw the panic in her eyes. “Are you all right?” Instantly fearful, he was at her side in a few swift strides, memories of her stillness the last hours before reaching the ranch vividly recalled. Sitting beside her with a haste that echoed his apprehension, he quickly touched his palm to her forehead. “Should I call the doctors? Do you feel warm?”

“I’m fine.” Like someone about to walk off the end of the earth was fine.

“Are you sure?”

“A little tired,” she said, wanting him to leave, wanting this unhappy conversation terminated.

“I’ll take care of you,” Trey said very softly, his fingers lightly brushing her pale hair off her shoulders.

“You don’t have to. I mean it. We’ve all imposed too much already.” Empress thought of the enormous sum of money
he’d given her, enough to allow her family a new start in life, how he’d devoted himself to the children, how he’d brought them all out safely in her illness. The debt was becoming too large. And the sooner she stopped adding to it, the better it would be.

“I
want
to take care of you.”

“I can take care of myself,” Empress replied a trifle brusquely, her shattered feelings contributing to her curtness.

“Don’t be so touchy.”

“I’ll be touchy if I please.”

“Suit yourself,” he said pleasantly.

“Thank you,” she replied in an ungracious tone that wasn’t thankful at all.

“Certainly.” His smile was benign. “I know how a fever can make one irritable.”

“Dammit, Trey, don’t be so insufferably understanding.”

“I’m always understanding.”

“And I’m the Queen of the Nile. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to rest.”
And cry my eyes out
, she thought.

“I guess I’ve no other choice.”

“Well, you could stay and watch me sleep, but I’m sure you’ve better things to do.”

“I’ll just have to flat out ask you,” Trey went on, curiously unresponsive to Empress’s replies.

“No, not now, I’ve a headache,” Empress retorted, sweetly malicious, her resentment of Trey’s libertine life-style having overcome her melancholy.

“Will you marry me?”

Yes! was her instant reaction, a screaming, shrieking yes from the world’s highest mountaintop. Unequivocal, without hesitation. “Are you coming down with my fever?” she said instead.

“Answer my question,” Trey said. He wanted the answer he wanted. Trey Braddock-Black, scion of wealth and power, wanted assent. “Answer,” he repeated quietly, encircling her wrists with his slender fingers. He didn’t want her to leave him.

“Are you sure?” Empress inquired, his question so abrupt, so without endearments and gallantry, Trey’s fingers clamped like shackles on her wrists. It was not the dream young girls dream; it was not a fairy-tale proposal.

He hesitated a bare fraction of a moment before he answered, “Yes.”

Still no ardent words of love, only the cryptic pause and single word. And if Empress Jordan had been a practical woman, she would have replied in the affirmative without further ado. She was, however, not. She was impractical enough to want at least the minimum words of love. “Do you love me?” she asked simply, her large eyes inquisitive. Her background, the early years of privilege and wealth, never completely altered by the more recent years of hardship, may have prompted the question. Her passions said yes, but where another woman may have unhesitatingly accepted Trey for his position and fortune alone, Empress wanted her love returned.

Trey looked at her, at the delicate beauty of her face, the willful lift of her chin, her eyes regarding him with unreserved candor. He smiled, suddenly positive, in the tumult and refractory images of freedom curtailed, of one thing at least. “I love you,” he said. “I love you very much.”

She smiled back, an assured, dazzling glow. “Don’t you want to know if I love you?”

The thought hadn’t occurred to him, with female worship commonplace in his experience, that she would not love him. But he was less arrogant than he appeared, so he apologized with charm and waited to hear her answer.

“I love you,” she said with a sweet, fey air, “more than Clover.”

“What more,” he replied graciously, his dark head dipping gracefully with a courtier’s fluent ease, “could any man want?” And he released her wrists with smooth finesse, as though with the bargain completed, the threat of compulsion was no longer necessary. “Is tomorrow too soon, or would you like a large wedding?” The teasing tone was nicely prominent once again.

“Are you always so presumptuous?”

“Years of practice.” Exuberance, now, in his voice.

“Is there a rush?”

That heartbeat again, before he answered, that unnerving hesitation, the locked innermost door.
Yes, marry me before I panic and change my mind. I’ve never done this before, swore I never would, at least not for another decade; marry me tomorrow before all the logic takes hold again.
His feelings
were all too novel, the habit of avoiding matrimony still powerful. It was like overcoming a built-in prejudice. “No, of course not,” he said.

“I’d like to wait, then, until I’m stronger. So I can stand for my wedding.”

“I don’t want to wait,” he said, his voice low. “But I understand.” He drew in a deep breath, of apprehension or relief, she couldn’t tell.… But his pale eyes were fervent; of that at least, she was always sure. “Next week will be fine,” he agreed. “Should I tell the children, or would you like to?”

“We’ll both tell them. They’re going to be ecstatic.”

“The feeling is mutual,” Trey replied charmingly, thinking how lucky he was to have found her for now and all the joyful, sweeping tomorrows.

The bright morning light accentuated Empress’s paleness, her eyes dark like pine forests and enormous against the fairness of her skin. She was resting white on white: her batiste gown stark chalk, the pillows and sheets shimmering pearl, the soft blanket touched with glimpses of ivory in the luxurious wool. Only her hair held color, gilded crocus and lemon, in melodramatic disarray. It had frizzed around her face from her fever, delicate tendrils brushed back from her ears and temples, resting on the Irish lace of her nightgown collar.

On all the whiteness of the bed, against the delicacy of Empress’s small form, Trey’s dark power contrasted starkly. He was lean, muscled strength and bronzed skin that seemed to bring in the outdoors, and when he slowly reached out to recapture her hands, his large hands completely engulfed hers, his long fingers curling so that her hands fit into his palms. He had almost lost her, he thought with a stab of fear. Death had almost sprung the trap, and his mouth went dry. at the remembrance. A feeling of protection washed over him, novel in its impulse and impact. Until Empress, he had never considered taking care of another person, and he understood for the first time his father’s fierce protection of his mother.

How many times had he heard his father say, “I won’t have your mother unhappy,” when one of his escapades came to light, “and your behavior is very likely to cause her unhappiness”? Hazard’s reprimands were delivered in a moderate voice, never issued as an order, but the message was clear: Trey was to restrain himself on the point in question.

“Next week, then, we’ll be married.” There was that touch of impatience again in his voice. “Is that all right?” he added, remembering his manners.

Empress smiled. “Next week is fine.”

“Good,” he said with finality, and he brushed a light kiss down the bridge of her nose. “I’ll have Mabel bring up materials for your wedding gown. She’ll have to begin sewing immediately if—”

“Trey,” Empress interrupted, “I don’t want a large wedding. I don’t need a special gown.” She wanted something simple, intimate, not a grand, staged spectacular.

“Nonsense.” The word was surety from a man familiar with ordering the world to his perfection. “You’re my Empress and should be dressed accordingly. You should have a train, diamonds—or would you prefer sapphires? Our Black Lode Mine produces some of the finest … they’re touched with lavender.”

Pulling her hands free, Empress lifted her chin so her eyes softly challenged his. “Trey, I don’t
need
that.” Her voice was quietly hushed. “I only want
you.
”

Swiftly his hands closed on her shoulders, and his dark head bent low so that their faces were level. “Hey … hey,” he whispered, “I’m sorry … really. Whatever you want. And you have me”—his gentle, pale eyes held hers, and she saw deep inside grace and caring and overwhelming desire—“forever.”

To know true happiness, she thought, it would have been enough to have him for a single moment … and he was hers—forever. “I love you,” she murmured, tears glistening in her eyes, and the world was suddenly too small to hold her happiness. She had gained her heart’s desire in the few moments past, and her joy spilled out into the universe.

Trey’s hands slid up her shoulders, drifted fingertip-light across her throat, and gently cupped her face in his hands. “Don’t cry. I’ll take care of you,” he said softly, “and the children. You’re my life.” His mouth brushed hers in a light caress of self-control, for she was still frail with illness. “Later,” he said with teasing warmth as he straightened and looked down at her, “when you’re stronger, you can kiss me back.”

“And I will,” Empress replied, more happy than she thought possible, “in our lifetime ahead.”

It gave him enormous pleasure to see her happy. “In that lifetime now,” he said with a resolute dispatch she’d never heard before—the kind no doubt used at the legislature when he saw to it that things were done, “if you want to regain Guy’s title, we’ll hire the best lawyers in France. Or if you want to stay on Winter Mountain, we’ll build a new home and a better barn, plant orchards, bring up equipment to really farm. Or if you choose,” he went on, a faint smile lifting his beautiful mouth, “to live under a palm tree in Tahiti, we’ll do it. Whatever you want,” he said, quietly determined, “I’ll give you.”

Tears welled up in her eyes. To have Trey help with the overwhelming responsibility of the children, to be able to lean on him and rely on his strength, to have this beautiful man she loved beyond anything in the world—hers. It was orchid bowers and perpetual springtime. “You don’t have to give me things,” she said, and her lush lower lip trembled with the intensity of her feelings.

She was still so pale, Trey thought, her hair unkempt, faint blue hollows under her eyes, and … so precious to him. She carried delight in her body that completely disarmed him and so much more, he’d realized, not only in the harrowing hours of her illness but again this morning. He wanted to give her everything; he wanted to dress her and feed her and brush her hair in the mornings. He wanted to give her the world’s treasures and eternal happiness. He wanted to give her children. He was young and in love for the first time in his life, and if he didn’t have her beside him, he knew his life would be unutterably empty.

With a light fingertip he brushed the tears from her lashes.

“I
want
to give you everything. I want you to know every happiness. But most of all,” he said, this vastly favored young man, “I want you to be
mine.
”

“I am, I am, I am,” Empress replied joyfully, the scent and touch and feel of paradise enveloping her like a perfumed dream. “But if I love you,” she went on, her voice fragrant with playfulness, “you must love me back as much.”

He smiled, thinking how often and with what variety he’d show her he loved her once she was well again. “I’m more
than willing,” he replied, his smile lighting his eyes, “to love you back until the seas run dry.”