Trilby (14 page)

He found himself smiling a minute later. Smiling, when the pain had been at its worst just seconds before. With a rough sound, he traced the tears down her cheeks and looked into her wet eyes with a kind of inner knowledge of her that shocked him. She didn’t usually cry. He knew that, somehow; knew that she didn’t show weakness or pain or grief in front of others.

“You said it was a pretense, your fear of me when we first met,” he said suddenly. “Why?”

She grimaced. “Men don’t notice me. I’m plain and thin and educated…I wanted you to notice me,” she choked, dropping her eyes.

And he had. Looked and remembered and longed for her. He looked out over the horizon to the house where
people were now standing on the front porch. He and Sissy were out of the way among the rocks, just out of sight. But soon they’d be missed and looked for. He had to take her down there.

“I’m sorry,” she said, replacing her glasses. “I shouldn’t have pretended.”

“I was doing the same thing,” he replied solemnly. “I enjoy the reaction I get from whites when they discover that I’m not totally stupid.”

“Women are stupid, too, didn’t you know? We’re made for scrubbing floors and having children. God gave us minds, but we keep them in the pantry so they won’t rot,” she said dryly.

He burst out laughing. She made his heart lift. “I see that you have had your portion of bad treatment.”

“That is an understatement, sir. I mentioned going to a university and half the people in my family fainted. Nice girls do not get educated; they get married.” She pushed back a strand of hair that had come loose from her neat bun as he urged the horse forward. “I want to know about the ancient peoples who lived here. I want to know what they did, what their culture was like. Aren’t you curious?”

“Yes,” he replied. “I wish I knew more.”

“You could go to school, too.”

“An Indian at a university?” He looked properly horrified.

“Well, I suppose several people in your family would faint, too.”

“I have no family left,” he said matter-of-factly.

“I’m sorry. Family is nice, even if it does get on your nerves from time to time.”

“So I’m told. I must get you home,” he said, glancing up at the sky. “Rain is very dangerous here.”

“You told me that.”

He chuckled. “So I did.” He shifted her more comfortably as the horse ambled along the road. “Have you a Christian name?”

She nodded. “Alexandra. My family calls me Sissy. When Ben, my brother, was young, it was the closest he could come to my given name.”

“Alexandra.” He smiled faintly. “It suits you.”

“Did you have a Christian name?”

“The priests called me
Hierro.
It means ‘iron’ in Spanish. They said I had a head like it.”

“I can believe that.”

“A woman’s place is to agree,” he chided.

“All Indians are savages,” she joked.

He smiled. So did she. The horse began the slow decline down from the rocky ridge toward the house. The rain was starting to fall already.

“I
CAN’T BELIEVE
you actually allowed him to bring you home in that fashion,” Richard told Sissy with icy hauteur. “An Indian, putting hands on my sister!”

“Would you rather he’d left me out in the desert to be washed away in a flood?” Sissy raged at him. She’d been astonished at the attack over the supper table. Mary and Trilby had been on the porch when Naki brought her home. They hadn’t said anything, although Mary had looked numb. The men had been out with the cattle, and were only told about Naki’s intervention when they came home at suppertime. The fur had begun to fly at once.

“The lack of convention—” he began furiously.

“I have to agree,” Jack Lang intervened, his face stiff. “I’ll speak to Thorn about his man.”

“Why don’t you speak to
him
about it?” Sissy demanded. “He isn’t an ignorant savage.”

Richard scoffed. “He doesn’t even understand English.”

“He speaks three languages,” Sissy said shortly. “English is one of them. He’s much better educated than you are, brother, dear, and he’s much less of a snob.”

She walked off, ending the argument. Behind her, she heard Jack Lang and her brother still deploring Naki’s actions. Julie’s trill voice joined in, deploring Sissy’s outlandish behavior. Naturally, she thought, Julie would love taking Richard’s part against her!

I
F
S
ISSY HAD
hoped a good night’s sleep would stop any further discussion of her adventure, she was doomed to disappointment. Richard and Jack were fuming about the incident all through breakfast, and Sissy was alternately berated and talked about.

“Men!” she said, exasperated, as a fascinated Trilby joined her in the living room after they’d put away the dishes.

“Did you say yesterday that Naki speaks several languages?” Trilby asked curiously.

“Yes. He was educated by the priests. He’s very interesting,” the other girl said hesitantly, and blushed.

Trilby didn’t know what to say. She knew that Sissy’s brother Richard was shocked at her behavior. So was Trilby’s family, and she, herself. Sissy was her best friend, but part of her knew that Richard was right about the hopelessness of any relationship between a white woman and a man of another race. “Sissy, he’s
an Indian,” she said. “Despite his education, he’s a man of another race.”

“Not you, too,” Sissy said sadly. She sat down on the worn sofa wearily. “Ben is the only member of my family who didn’t find my attitude shocking. He’s young, of course. It seems I shall have to fight the whole world and my best friend in order to be Naki’s friend.”

“No, of course you shan’t,” Trilby said at once, loyalty breaking through her disapproval. “I’m sorry.”

“He said you were kissing Richard,” Sissy murmured dryly.

Trilby hesitated. She nodded. “Yes, I suppose I was. But it wasn’t what I expected,” she said involuntarily.

“You’re in love with him. Surely it should have been everything you wanted it to be.”

“It wasn’t.” Trilby sat down beside her and folded her hands in her lap. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I, unless those pointed references Julie’s been making to your tough neighbor really do make sense. Thorn Vance is very attractive, Trilby. And he doesn’t look at you in the way most men look at neighbors.”

Trilby flushed. “Well, we got off to a bad start. He thought I was something I wasn’t, and he treated me in an ungentlemanly fashion.”

“Oh?”

Trilby glanced up and down. “He’s…very experienced. I saw a side of him that I shouldn’t have seen at all. Now he’s sorry about it, but I don’t trust him anymore.” She grimaced. “Sissy, I’ve loved Richard for years. But when he kissed me, I—I felt nothing!”

Sissy caught her hand and pressed it. “And when the very handsome Mr. Vance kissed you, you did?”

“Yes.” She put her face in her hands. “I’m so ashamed. To feel…like that…about a ruffian!”

“How do you think I feel? I’m attracted to a savage red man.”

Trilby made a face. “And I was no help at all. I’m…” She hesitated and stared at Sissy. “But I thought you were terrified of him!”

“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.

T
HORN 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.