Trilby (21 page)

He hadn’t changed at all. He was wearing black trousers with a pristine white shirt and a black string tie. He’d removed his jacket, though, and already his lean fingers were unfastening the tie and shirt.

“I’m tired, are you?” he asked conversationally. “I didn’t remember how wearing it was to get married.”

That reminded her that it wasn’t his first time to the altar. She studied the bubbles in her champagne glass. “Yes, it is wearing.”

His eyes fell to the gracefully shaped glass in her hand. “Do you know why champagne glasses are shaped like that?” he asked suddenly.

She glanced at him and then studied the elegant glass. “Why, no. Why?”

He smiled faintly. “Are you certain you want to know?”

“Yes, of course,” she replied quizzically.

He leaned a little forward, sensuously stroking the glass in his own hand. “They were modeled after a mold of Marie Antoinette’s breasts,” he said softly.

She dropped the glass. It wasn’t the surprise of his answer so much as the way he was caressing his own glass and looking at Trilby’s bosom.

He laughed softly at the visible evidence of her unease. He put down his own glass and got up. As he approached her, she saw the darkness glittering in his eyes, the faint sensual threat of his body.

She stood quickly. “I’d better clean this up,” she began frantically.

But he scooped her up in his arms as if she had no weight. “Not until we’ve made love,” he said huskily. He bent and began to kiss her, his mouth tasting of champagne and mint, his breath warm as it filled her mouth.

She wanted to protest, to fight, but his touch drugged her. She relented only seconds later and her arms slid shyly up to his neck. Her body trembled with delicious anticipation, remembering the last time and how glorious it had been, even in the cool damp of the tent on the hard ground. This time it would be in a warm bed with no possibility of interruptions, and they had all night.

“I’ve wanted you for so long, Trilby,” he said unsteadily as he laid her gently on the spotless white coverlet of the bed. “You’re all I dream about.”

She lay there in the faint light from the kerosene lamp, her breasts rising and falling erratically as he
began to remove his shirt. She was about to ask him to blow out the lamp when he pulled off the shirt and tossed it aside. Her eyes found what her hands had long since learned about him, that he was hairy and muscular and very, very male. She was so fascinated with the lean muscle of his torso that she didn’t even notice that he was unfastening his trousers.

When he began to ease them down, revealing the part of him that was all male, threateningly male, she stilled and her lips parted on a gasp.

“Now you know,” he said in a softly menacing tone.

She averted her eyes, expecting amused laughter, but there was none. The rustle of fabric and the thud of heavy boots came to her ears, and then he was sitting beside her.

“The lamp, Thorn,” she whispered frantically when his hands went to the fastening of her dress.

“I want it on, Trilby,” he said very quietly. “I want you to see me. I want to see you, in this greatest of all intimacies.”

“But…” She blushed furiously as he removed everything above her waist and eased her back down so that he could remove the rest of her underthings and slide the dress completely from her body, along with everything else.

She tried to cover herself, but his hands prevented her. After a few shocked, stifling seconds, she lay still while his eyes completed their rapt possession of her nudity.

“Thorn, please…” she began self-consciously.

“All my life, it’s been in the dark,” he said, his eyes on her breasts. “This time, I want to see it all, every second of it. I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want
you.” He bent and put his mouth to the very tip of her breast. He kissed it and suckled it and very quickly made it hard.

She caught her breath at the remembered pleasure. Her hands nervously cradled his thick dark hair and she lay at his mercy, her eyes on the faint movements of his face as he experienced her.

His other hand ran slowly down her bare thighs and hips and over her flat stomach. Seconds drew into long, lazy minutes, and his mouth and hands grew more intrusive, more bold, like the noises that pulsed past Trilby’s dry lips.

When she was completely responsive, he coaxed her hands to his own body and let her explore it, teaching her where to touch and how, so that his own pleasure grew at a pace with hers.

“It’s…indecent!” she choked as he finally levered his body between her legs and caught her thighs to pull her sharply up into stark intimacy. Her eyes looked straight into his as he did it. She felt the jerk of his body in pleasure, and saw it, as well as the sudden spreading darkness of his eyes and the pulling of muscles in his sweat-dampened face.

“Yes,” he choked. His eyes slowly went down the wide space he’d left between their bodies and found where they were slowly joining. “Look, Trilby,” he whispered.

She did, automatically, and gasped as he stilled, letting her see the starkness of their intimacy. He looked up, meeting her shocked eyes. He held them, and slowly, with the motion of the summer wind in the trees, began to tease his way inside her welcoming body.

“It is beautiful,” he whispered, searching her face as
the pleasure bit into his body. “This, with you, is something far, far more profound than a lustful joining of bodies.”

His unexpected tenderness touched her. She relaxed as he furthered his possession, and her hands went up to cradle his face, caressing his hard mouth as he gasped for breath and began to shudder.

Her body, like his, was building to ecstasy. She shivered with every slow, deep movement. She didn’t hide her eyes. She let him watch her. That seemed to heighten his pleasure, because he groaned now with every tender motion.

“Accept me,” he breathed unsteadily. He moved suddenly into complete possession and buffeted her with sharp, quick darts of pleasure that lifted her off the mattress in her shaken frenzy.

She had no comprehension of anything then, except for the silken blast of color and heat and oblivion that left her crying out for what he could give her.

He fulfilled her. It was as simple, as profound, as that. He rolled away from her finally and lay on his back, staring at the ceiling while he came to grips with the fact that he loved her. Only love would explain the fever she kindled not only in his body but in his mind and heart, in his very soul. The way he possessed her had little to do with a fleeting need in his loins. This time had been even more incredible than the last. He could barely believe the pleasure of it.

Trilby lay beside him, open to his eyes, and forced herself to concentrate on trying to breathe. She felt languid now in the aftermath of pleasure, as if she were still a part of him. He looked at her, and she made no attempt to cover herself. She belonged to him now.

His eyes were slow and thorough, seeing all the places he’d touched her with his mouth and hands, seeing the red marks of pleasure that his devouring hunger had left on her.

“You will have bruises,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry. I never meant to be so rough with you.”

“At the last, it was—was hardly possible to be gentle,” she said, and flushed. She averted her eyes.

“I gave you pleasure, did I not?” he asked quietly, reading her reply in the worsening color and faint sound she made. “Have you been taught that women are not supposed to enjoy intimacy with their husbands?”

“Yes,” she confessed. “They say that only bad women had pleasure with a man.”

“You’re hardly a bad woman.” He lifted her hand and kissed it gently. “Thank you for the pleasure you gave me.”

“Thorn…”

He bent and kissed her eyelids closed. “Let me have you again,” he whispered, slowly teasing his way down to her mouth.

“But it wouldn’t be right!” she cried frantically.

“Why not?”

His mouth drew lazily over hers and, while she was trying to think up reasons, he slid back onto her body and possessed her with deft, sweet efficiency. By the time her mind actually began to work again, she was lying against him in the second, sated, aftermath.

“I never dreamed it could be so good,” he said drowsily. He cradled her against him and pulled up the covers. “Sleep now, little one.”

“My clothes,” she protested.

He turned her face toward his just before he blew
out the lamp and looked deeply into her eyes. “In the morning, we will want each other again, even more than we already have. It will be easier without the burden of clothing to remove.”

She went scarlet and shivered faintly with anticipation.

“It is no sin to want to make love with me,” he whispered, smiling. “God gave us pleasure to heighten the joy of marriage and the children it brings. Enjoy me, Trilby. Let me enjoy you. There’s no shame in it.”

She weakened, because she did want him very much. It wasn’t quite reasonable. Surely part of her still resented the way Thorn had maneuvered her into marriage. But when he held her, all she knew was the seduction of her senses, her body. He was everything she wanted when he came within five feet of her.

With a little sigh, she snuggled close to him, laying her cheek on his broad, warm shoulder as she closed her eyes.

“Yes, that’s it,” he whispered. “Go to sleep. I’ve exhausted you, haven’t I?”

She thought that it was the most wonderful exhaustion she’d ever known. She whispered it as he turned out the lamp and she drifted off.

F
AR FROM THE
L
ANG HOUSE
, two figures stood in the confines of a blanket and watched the moon rise. One was tall and played a flute. The other was very feminine, her head on his chest while she enjoyed her last evening with the man she loved.

“What was that last song?” Sissy asked contentedly as he finished.

“Another in a long line of love songs,” Naki mur
mured dryly. “We have an endless supply. Men are always trying to woo women into their wickiups to tend fires and cook and have babies for them.”

Babies. She’d never have them, because children of two races were unwelcome in the world. The thought made her sad.

“If I were an Apache woman, I could live with you,” she said.

“I would have to pay several horses for you,” he reminded her. “And your brother would never agree.”

“My brother is a terrible man.”

“Is your father like him?”

She sighed. “I’m afraid so. But my mother is like me. She’s very much against the old ways. She thinks women should use their minds. She thinks we should be allowed to vote,” she added, with a smile.

“Apaches are not allowed to vote,” he replied, and laughed shortly. “It is our country, and we are denied suffrage.”

“Many injustices need correction,” she said.

“Indeed.”

She stood quietly in his arms and there was peace between them for a long time. “I must leave tomorrow.”

“A wise decision,” he replied. “It grows more difficult for me to leave you when we part.”

“It is difficult for me as well.”

He traced her chin with his thumb and slowly pushed it up so that he could see her eyes in the dim light from the moon. “You would like to sleep with me, would you not?” he whispered.

“Yes,” she replied honestly.

“And I with you.” He sighed. “I wish that you were Apache.”

“And I that you were white.” She reached up and kissed the corner of his mouth. “Naki, you could come to Louisiana with me….”

He put his finger over her mouth. “Never speak my name,” he said. “It is a taboo among us. A name has power.”

She smiled. “You are very superstitious.”

“It is my heritage.” He stroked her long hair. “I cannot leave here. Back East, I would be nothing more than a curiosity or an embarrassment. This is where I belong.”

“I could stay,” she said boldly.

“And live in a primitive shack on a reservation?” he asked sadly. “Where you would be treated like a disease? Many of my people hate whites.”

She groaned. “Why does it have to be like this?”

His powerful shoulders lifted and fell. “Who can say?” he replied sadly. “We are of a kind, you and I. How we found our way each to the other, I do not know. But my life will be empty without you in it.”

“And mine without you,” she said huskily.

He bent to her lips, kissing her softly, with aching tenderness.

“Oh, not like that,” she pleaded, tugging at his long, thick hair.

He untangled her fingers and clasped them warmly. “Just like that,” he corrected. “So that we can part without any risk of stepping across the line of convention.”

“I would risk anything—” she began.

“The child we made would pay our price,” he reminded her. “And it would be a high one.”

She desisted. “You’re right, of course. Why are you always right?”

“Oh, because I am superior and brilliant.”

She laughed and struck his chest playfully. “You are conceited.”

“It is the inevitable result of having a beautiful and intelligent woman throw herself at me,” he whispered.

She reached up and kissed him gently. “So it is.” She pressed close then, determined not to give way to tears. Her heart felt as if it might break inside her.

Naki, sensitive to her emotions, felt that sadness echoed inside himself. Giving her up was the only sensible thing to do. That didn’t make it easy. He’d never known what loneliness was before, even if he’d thought so when Conchita was killed. But he could taste it now. Life without this woman was going to hurt.

After a minute, he lifted the flute back to his lips. This time, the song he played was not a love song. Instead, it was one that his people traditionally played after the death of a loved one.

S
ISSY LEFT BY
train the next day. She was tearful but composed. Thorn and Trilby had driven her to the station in his Ford and watched her depart. Naki had been nowhere in sight, but Trilby would have bet anything that he was somewhere close by.

In fact, he was. There was a rise not too far from the station; he was sitting his horse atop it, saying a quiet goodbye to the woman his heart wanted.

“Look! Isn’t that an Indian?” one of the women in the coach asked excitedly, pointing.

“Yes,” her male traveling companion said, with disinterest. “The place is crawling with them. Filthy, ignorant savages! It will be a better world when they’re all wiped out!”

Sissy clutched her purse tightly to prevent an outburst. She detested that kind of blind ignorance, but it was rife in the world. This insulting man probably had no concept of the kind of person Naki was, no idea of the cultures that had existed here long before the first white men arrived on American soil. Someday, she promised herself, that would change. When people learned more about the Native Americans, they would learn to respect them.

Her eyes found the solitary figure on the painted horse far in the distance and she called him a silent
goodbye. As he grew smaller and smaller, he became a crystalline blur in her tear-filled eyes. Finally he was visible only in Sissy’s heart, a bright memory of love that would last her all her life.

T
HORN DROVE
T
RILBY
back to the ranch and left her with Samantha while he changed back into his working garb. They were still not very comfortable together in the daylight, despite the sensual magic of the night before.

“I’ll get to work, then,” he said when he was in more comfortable garb. He clutched his Stetson in his hand and looked down at Trilby with a faintly impatient hunger. “I’ll try to come home at noon,” he said.

“That would be nice.”

She wouldn’t look at him. He tilted her face up to his with a lean, gentle hand. “Why do you persist in treating me like a stranger?” he said, and it was half query, half plea. “Do you mean to pretend that you didn’t find heaven in my arms last night?”

Her expression wavered and she flushed. “That is hardly a fit topic for—for discussion,” she stammered.

“But it is,” he said gently. “We’re married.”

“Just the same…”

“Little prude,” he said, with a soft sigh. “All right, keep your secrets. I’ll have them all one day.” His dark eyes narrowed as he towered over her. “You miss your friend, don’t you?”

“Sissy and I have been friends for many years,” she replied. “I always thought that one day she’d be my sister-in-law.”

The second the words were out she wished she could take them back. She put her hand to her mouth and felt
sick all over as she saw the expression that came and went in Thorn’s hard face.

“So it’s the man you miss, not his sister. I should have known,” he said bitterly. He turned away while he struggled with wounded pride and pain. After a minute, when he spoke, his voice was very composed. “Well, it seems that lust is no real substitute for love, even if I’ve been telling myself it could be.” He glared down at Trilby and a faint sneer came to his hard lips. “Dream of your lost love, if you must, Trilby. It won’t matter to me. Just don’t whisper his name in my bed.”

“That was foul, Thorn!”

“And I’ll return the favor,” he continued, mad and wanting to hurt. “I’ll try not to whisper Sally’s name when I lie in your arms. God knows, as sweet as you are, you’re no substitute for her!”

He turned and walked away, leaving her with wounds that went soul deep. Incredible, she thought dizzily, not to know that she was in love with him until he as much as admitted that he was still in love with his first wife and was only using Trilby as a substitute for her in bed. She sat down heavily in a chair and moaned out loud.

T
HORN HAD HOLDINGS
in Mexico, and he was worried about them. The cavalry at Fort Huachuca had been ordered to the border late in November and a troop of the 8th Cavalry was camped in Douglas at the stockyards. Water holes were drying up and springs were lessening their flow. Thorn had mentioned being grateful to have access to Jack Lang’s water for his thirsty cattle. He was also talking about cutting his losses and disposing of his Mexican holdings.

The Mexican revolutionists were trying to drive out
the foreigners who owned most of their land. They didn’t care if the investors, or
hacendados,
were kind or not, they only wanted Mexico to belong to her people again. The revolutionaries might think that attacking Thorn’s hacienda in Mexico would force him out—there had been dozens of head of cattle run off, and horses as well. Two of his ranch workers in Mexico had been shot. Thorn hadn’t told Trilby that, but Jorge had. As she lived on the ranch, Trilby learned more and more about Thorn’s business, and Jorge was a walking encyclopedia of his deeds.

“He is so good to my people, señora,” Jorge told her, with feeling. “He is
el jefe
to us, the
patrón.
He feeds the hungry and makes sure that there is a little land for our families to farm. When the government took away our land, we had not even a way to provide for our little children. Many people went to the cities to live, but there was no work and they had to beg for food.” His face darkened. “I tell you, señora, the wind will sweep over Mexico and tear Díaz from his office. Madero will heal all wounds when he is in power, I know it!”

“For your people’s sake, I hope so, Jorge,” Trilby said quietly. “But if he is good to the people who work on his land in Mexico, why did Mexicans attack him?”

“It was the
Federales
and the
rurales,
señora,” Jorge told her coldly. “The peasants who work for Díaz and his predators. They are our enemies. Murderers.
Matadores!
”

She blinked. “I thought a matador was a bullfighter.”

“There is no Spanish word for bullfighter, señora,” he explained patiently. “
Matador
means killer.”

She shivered. “I see.”

“Many of my people hate the Spanish and the Ameri
cans. They are all white men, you see, those who have power over us. But Madero, may the Holy Virgin bless him, has said that we will drive them all out of Mexico and take back our country that they have stolen from us. No longer will the wealthy gringo mine owners and industrialists make slaves of us.”

“In Louisiana,” Trilby said hesitantly, “there are farmers who work for wealthy men. They are called sharecroppers, because they work the other man’s land for a share of the crop. But it always seems to work out so that the farmer only goes deeper in debt and never gets much for his labors.”

“Sí.”
Jorge nodded. “That is the way of things everywhere, is it not, that the poor are enslaved by the wealthy? They keep us hungry so that we must depend on them for
dinero.
But it will change. These…sharecroppers. Why do they not revolt, as we have, and shoot the wealthy landowners?”

Trilby tried to imagine an armed action like that in her home state and smiled faintly. “I don’t suppose it would even occur to them,” she said honestly. “I hope your countrymen gain their independence, Jorge.”

“As I do, señora. So many have already died. And more will.” His thin shoulders lifted and fell. “It is not right that men should have to kill and die for a little flour and beans.”

For the rest of the day, she considered what Jorge had said. The newspapers were full of the escalating fighting in Mexico. Pascual Orozco, the leader of the insurgents in western Chihuahua, had called all patriotic Mexicans to arms against Díaz. Fighting in Chihuahua was fierce, and agents of the Mexican Northwestern Railroad were hard-pressed to find trainmen to even operate trains in
the vicinity. Thousands of men,
insurrectos
and
Federales,
were poised to clash, and the border was under constant scrutiny from local troops of cavalry and infantry. Everyone was nervous.

Trilby was so caught up in her thoughts that Samantha had to ask her twice about Christmas preparations.

“Oh, we’ll have a
nacimiento,
of course,” Samantha said, speaking of the Mexican custom of a nativity scene of carved wood that was placed in the house during Christmas. “But I would love to have a Christmas tree. My mother always had a grand one, but I was never allowed to help decorate it. Could I help you?”

“Of course,” Trilby said, smiling down at the child. It was the first gaiety, the first enthusiasm, that she’d ever noticed in the little girl.

They began the preparations for Christmas with subdued excitement, ignoring Thorn’s irritated mumbling about the mess they were making as they prepared popcorn and cranberry chains and began to cut out colorful paper ornaments.

“As long as we don’t tuck ornaments into your saddle and rig, I hardly think you have cause to complain,” Trilby told him, with a straight face.

She was trying to tease, but Thorn had weathered too many emotional crises to be lighthearted. He backed away from any attempt Trilby made to come close, and she knew it.

“Do any of the men come for Christmas dinner?” Trilby asked, one further attempt to make conversation.

“Most of them have families and take the day off to spend it with them,” he said. “Naki has no family, and he’s a Christian, so I usually invite him to dinner.”

“He’s welcome.”

“Except,” he added, “that he took off into the mountains right after we married and nobody knows where he is.”

Trilby was almost certain that the Apache’s disappearance had something to do with Sissy. If she and Thorn had been more cordial, she’d have said so.

“If he comes back in time, you won’t mind two savages at the table?” he asked dryly.

She flushed and didn’t look up. “I’ve made a cake for dessert tonight,” she said pleasantly, ignoring the sarcasm. “It’s lemon.”

“I won’t be in for supper,” he said.

When she and Samantha were alone again, Trilby allowed herself to regret the amount of time Thorn managed to spend away from the house these days. For a short time, she’d hoped they might become as close in the daylight as they had that one magical night they’d spent together since their marriage. But as time passed, it seemed less and less likely that anything would change for the better. He thought she was missing Richard. She’d let him, because of his taunt about Sally. Now she wondered if they weren’t both disguising their true feelings to avoid being hurt, each by the other. She tried to approach him, but he backed away from her. He wouldn’t speak of anything personal. She’d given up, not because she didn’t care, but because it was so obvious that he desired nothing from her anymore. He didn’t even want her, and he’d made it obvious.

Just the week before, a man and his pretty wife got lost and stopped by Los Santos for directions. Thorn’s manner toward the woman had been very chivalrous and tender, and Trilby had been out of sorts for the rest of the day remembering it. He’d been like that toward
her once, before Richard had arrived to destroy her hope of happiness.

Sissy had written. She mentioned the possibility of coming back with Professor McCollum’s archaeology class later in the spring. She didn’t mention Naki, but Trilby could read between the lines. That night Trilby and Thorn had shared his tent seemed so long ago. Her eyes grew sad as she considered the sudden distance between them.

Thorn had seen the sadness in Trilby’s face and looked over her shoulder to see Sissy’s beautiful, legible handwriting. Further down, there was a reference to Richard and a debutante he’d become infatuated with. He mistakenly thought that the lines about her former beau had made Trilby sad.

“So he’s found someone new, has he? How sad for you, Trilby,” he said coldly.

She went blank for a moment; then she realized what he was thinking. She looked up, furious. “Have you nothing better to do than taunt me?”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Forgive me. I’m sure you spend every day of your life comparing the Eastern fellow to me and wishing I could match up to him. Cold comfort, isn’t it, my dear, that he has to depend on the charity of relatives for his livelihood?”

She blinked. “What do you mean?”

“He travels constantly from one manor house to the other out of choice? I believe Sissy said that her college education was going to be difficult for her people to manage because they were not well-off financially.”

That had never occurred to Trilby. Yes, Richard did travel extensively, and always to the abode of some rich
relative. She’d never thought of him as a parasite before, but Thorn obviously had.

She stiffened with pride. “Richard’s manner of livelihood is his own business.”

“Fortunately, you don’t have to share it. How would you like being a burden on your relatives to keep up appearances?”

“I should hate it,” she whispered huskily.

He nodded. “As would I. We are alike in that we both have too much pride.” He bent suddenly and caught her hair around one lean hand, dragging her face back so that he could see it. In the back of his mind, it barely registered that she didn’t protest. In fact, she seemed completely at his mercy for once. His eyes fell to her soft, parted lips. “What a waste,” he breathed as he leaned over her and caught her mouth hungrily under his.

She whimpered with unexpected pleasure. It had been so long, so…long!

But when she moved closer, he let her go and stood up, his eyes mocking. “Do you miss him that much?” he demanded. “So much that even I can substitute for him? What a pity you didn’t leave when he did.”

She swallowed, her body trembling. “What a pity you seduced me!”

He considered that. He shook his head very slowly. “No, I won’t agree with that. It was beautiful. The only regret I have is that a child didn’t come of it.”

She flushed and looked down at her lap. She toyed with her skirts. “I…would not have minded a child.”

He hesitated. She was less withdrawn than she had been. For a moment, he almost believed that she was warming to him.