Trilby

Her heart ached as she thought about how fastidious Richard always was. She wished they’d never left Louisiana. Her father had inherited the ranch from his late brother. He and her mother had sunk every dime they had into the place, and it took all the family, plus the hired help, to run it. It had been a dry year, despite the floods, and ranchers were losing cattle across the border. All this trouble, Trilby thought, when Arizona was on its way to becoming a state. So uncivilized.

The desert was a drastic change for people more used to swamps and bayous and humidity. Trilby and her mother and father, too, had come from money, which was the only reason Jack Lang had enough to stock the ranch. But their finances had suffered over the past few months, and things were no better now than they had been. But they’d all adapted amazingly well— even Trilby, who’d hated it on sight and swore she’d never be happy on a ranch in the middle of a desert with only two lone paloverde trees for shade.

“Look, isn’t that Mr. Vance?” Ted asked, shading his eyes as he spotted a solitary rider on a big buckskin horse.

Trilby ground her perfect teeth at the sight of him. Yes, it was Thornton Vance, all right. Nobody else around Blackwater Springs rode a horse with that kind of lithe, superior arrogance, or tilted his Stetson at just that slant across his tanned brow.

“I do wish his saddle would fall out from under him,” she muttered wickedly.

“I don’t know why you don’t like him, Trilby,” Ted said sadly. “He’s very nice to me.”

“I suppose he is, Teddy.” But he and Trilby were enemies. Mr. Vance had seemed to take an instant dislike to Trilby the day they were introduced.

The Langs had lived in Blackwater Springs for almost three weeks by the time they made Thornton Vance’s acquaintance. Trilby remembered his delicate, faintly haughty wife holding carelessly to his arm as the introductions were made at a church social. Thornton Vance’s cold, dark eyes had narrowed with unexpected antagonism the minute they’d spotted Trilby.

She’d never understood that animosity. His wife had been faintly condescending when they were introduced. Mrs. Vance was beautiful and knew it. Her dress was ready-made and expensive, like her purse and lace-up shoes. She had blond hair and blue eyes— and her well-bred contempt for Trilby’s inexpensive clothing had been infuriating. Her little girl looked subdued. No wonder.

Back in Louisiana, Trilby had worn good clothes herself. But now there was no money for frivolities, and she had to make do with what she had. The implied insult in Mrs. Vance’s cold eyes had gone straight to her heart. Perhaps unconsciously she’d extended her hostility toward the woman to include Thornton Vance himself.

Thornton Vance had frightened Trilby from the beginning. He was a tall, rough, fiery sort of man who said exactly what he thought and didn’t have any of the usual social graces. He was an outlaw in a land of outlaws, for all his wealth, and Trilby had no use for him. He was as different from her Richard as night was from day. Not exactly her Richard, she had to admit, not yet. But if she’d been able to stay in Louisiana for just a little longer, if she’d been a little older…She groaned inwardly as she tried to understand why fate had cast her into Thornton Vance’s path.

Vance’s cousin Curt had been totally different from Thorn, and Trilby had warmed to him at once. She liked Curt Vance because he was cultured and gentlemanly, and he somehow reminded her of Richard. She didn’t see him often, but she was fond of him.

Curt had seemed fond of Mr. Vance’s wife, too. Sally Vance had managed to interfere every time Trilby had spoken to Curt, holding his arm with a faintly proprietorial air. Her antagonism for Trilby had been more evident every time they met, so that finally Trilby managed not to attend any function where she was likely to see the other woman.

Sally had died in a very suspicious accident just two months after the Langs arrived in Blackwater Springs. Mr. Vance had accepted the routine condolences from her family, but when Trilby offered hers, he actually turned on his booted heel and walked away in what was a visible and very public snub, motioning his little girl along with him.

Trilby had never had the nerve to ask how she’d managed to offend a man she’d only just met. She hadn’t even looked at him properly. He’d avoided her like the plague, even when they met socially and he had his little girl with him. The little girl had seemed to like Trilby, but she couldn’t get near her because of the icy Mr. Vance. She seemed uncomfortable in her father’s company, and Trilby could understand that. He intimidated people.

He’d mellowed in the past two months, though, because he often came to the ranch to see her father. He always talked about water rights and how the drought was affecting his great herds of cattle. Mr. Vance owned an enormous tract of land, thousands of acres of it, with part in the United States and part in Mexico, in the state of Sonora. Apparently Blackwater Springs Ranch sat smack-dab in the middle of the only reliable water source nearby, and Mr. Vance wanted it. Her father wouldn’t discuss selling any land. That was like him. He wouldn’t give up those water rights, either.

Trilby’s busy mind coasted when Thornton Vance reined in just in front of the steps and crossed his tanned wrists over the pommel. Though a wealthy man, he dressed like one of his cowboys. He wore old denim jeans with worn leather bat-wing chaps. His shirt was checked and old, too, with scratched leather wristbands over the cuffs. A huge red bandanna drooped around his strong neck. It was stained and dusty now, and wrinkled. His tan hat wasn’t in much better shape, looking as if it had been twisted, rained on, and stomped a few times. His boots were disreputable, like Teddy’s after he’d been working cattle, the toes curled up from too much dampness and the heels worn down on either side in back. Mr. Vance didn’t look very elegant, she decided, and her distaste for him showed in her face.

“Good morning, Mr. Vance,” Trilby said quietly, remembering her manners, belatedly and reluctantly.

He stared at her without speaking. “Is your father at home?”

She shook her head. He had the kind of voice that was soft as velvet and deep as night, but it could cut like a whip when he wanted it to. He did now.

“Your mother?” he tried again.

“They’re off with Mr. Torrance at the store,” Teddy volunteered. “He drove them in on the buckboard. Dad says Mr. Torrance is used up, but it isn’t true, Mr. Vance. He isn’t at all used up. He was once a Texas Ranger, did you know?”

“Yes, I knew, Ted.” Mr. Vance let his dark eyes slide back to Trilby. They were set in a keen, sharply defined face with a straight nose and darkly tanned skin, black eyebrows matching the equally thick, straight black hair under his hat.

Trilby felt inadequately covered for some reason, even though her neat calico dress was very demure. She wiped her hands unnecessarily on her apron. “I should get back to the kitchen before I burn my apple pie,” she began, hoping he might take the hint and go.

“Am I being offered a slice of it?” he drawled instead.

She almost panicked. Teddy answered for her, his young voice excited. “Surely!” he said enthusiastically. “Trilby bakes the best pie, Mr. Vance! I like it with cream, but our cow’s gone dry just lately and we’ve had to do without.”

“Your father didn’t mention the cow,” Vance said as he swung lithely out of the saddle and tied the reins to the porch post. He came up onto the porch with a bound, his long, lithe body as graceful out of the saddle as in it. He towered over Teddy and Trilby, too tall and forceful.

She turned quickly and went back into the house. At least her blond hair was up in its neat braid, not loose and uninhibited as she usually wore it around the house. She looked much more cool and collected than she felt. She wished she had some red cayenne pepper; she’d fill Mr. Vance’s pie full of it. He probably thrived on hot peppers and arsenic, she thought wickedly.

“We got another cow yesterday, from Mr. Barnes down the road,” Teddy volunteered. “But sis got busy baking and hasn’t milked her. I’ll go and do it for you, Trilby, while you check the pie. It will only take a little while.”

She tried to protest, but Teddy had grabbed the tin milking pail and rushed out the back door before she could stop him. She was left alone, and frightened, with the hostile Mr. Vance.

He wasn’t bothering to camouflage his hostility now, either, with Teddy out of the way. He pulled a Bull Durham pouch out of his pocket, along with a small folder of tissue papers, and proceeded to roll a cigarette with quick, deft movements of his long-fingered hands.

Trilby busied herself checking inside the wood stove to see if her pie was finished. Back home, there had been a gas stove. Trilby had been secretly afraid of it, but she sometimes missed it now that she had to cook on the wood-burning one, the best they could afford. Stocking the ranch had been expensive. Keeping it going was getting harder by the day. Teddy should never have mentioned the cow going dry.

She saw the brown crust even as she smelled the mingled cinnamon and sugar and butter smell of baking apples. Just right. She took her cloths and got it quickly out of the oven and onto the long cooking table that ran almost from wall to wall. Her hands shook, but thank heaven, she didn’t drop the pie.

“Do I make you nervous, Miss Lang?” he asked, pulling up a chair. He straddled it, his powerful body coiled like a snake’s as he folded it down onto the chair and rested his forearms over its back. He looked very masculine, and the very set of his muscular body, with the chaps and jeans drawn tight over long, powerful legs, made Trilby feel awkward and shy. She’d never noticed Richard’s legs at all. Her sudden interest in Thorn’s unsettled her, made her defensive.

“Oh, no, Mr. Lang,” she replied, with a vacant smile. “I find hostility so invigorating.”

His eyebrows lifted and he had to stifle a smile. “Do you? Yet, your hands shake.”

“I have little experience of men…except for my father and brother. Perhaps I’m ill at ease.”

He watched her push back a wisp of blond hair with eyes that held nothing but contempt. “I thought you found my cousin quite irresistible at that social gathering last month.”

“Curt?” She nodded, missing the look that flared in his dark eyes. “I like him very much. He has a pleasant manner and a nice smile. He gave Teddy a peppermint stick.” She smiled at the memory. “My brother never forgets a kindness.” She glanced at him warily. “Your cousin reminds me of someone back home. He’s a kind man. And a gentleman,” she added pointedly, her eyes making her opinion of his garb, and himself, perfectly plain without a word being spoken.

He wanted to laugh out loud. Sally had told him about seeing Curt and Miss Lang here in a passionate embrace. She wasn’t the first to mention the relationship, either. A lady from the church—a notorious gossip—had mentioned seeing Curt and a blond woman in an embrace at a gathering. He’d taken the gossip home to Sally, who’d told him about Trilby. She’d done it quickly, but almost reluctantly, too. Thorn remembered that she’d gone quite pale at the time.

The revelation had left him with a fine contempt for Trilby. His cousin Curt was a married man, but Miss Lang didn’t seem to mind shattering convention. Funny, a woman who acted as ladylike as she did, behaving like that. But then, he knew too well what deceivers women were. Sally had pretended to love him, when she’d only wanted a life of wealth and comfort.

“Curt’s wife also admires him,” he said pointedly.

When she didn’t react, he sighed roughly and took a long draw from the cigarette, his eyes never leaving hers. “The wrong type of woman can ruin a good man and his life.”

“I have found very few good men out here,” she said flatly. She busied herself slicing the pie. Her hands shook and she hated the fact that he watched them, his smile mocking and unkind.

“You don’t seem to find the desert too hot, Miss Lang. Most Easterners detest it.”

“I’m a Southerner, Mr. Vance,” she reminded him. “Louisiana is hot in the summer.”

“Arizona is hot year-round. But you won’t find an overabundance of mosquitoes. We don’t have swamps here.”

She glared at him. “The yellow dust makes up for it.”

“Does it, truly?” he asked, mocking that very correct Southern accent that brought to mind cotillions and masked balls and mansions.

She wiped her hands and put the knife aside. She wouldn’t throw it at him, she wouldn’t!