Trilby

It was too bad about Jack Lang inheriting that ranch, he thought bitterly. If it hadn’t been for the Langs coming here to claim Blackwater Springs Ranch, Thorn would have been able to buy it. Then he wouldn’t be losing cattle right and left to drought. He had water on his Mexican property, but it was getting too dangerous to try to run cattle down there. He’d had one raid after another on his stock since the fighting had begun after Díaz’s reelection. Here, water was running out.

Thorn had to find a way to save Los Santos from ruin. The land came first. His father and his grandfather had instilled in him a terrible sense of responsibility for the land, for the heritage it represented, for the need to preserve it at any cost.

For just a moment, it flashed through his mind that he could solve all his problems by marrying Trilby. But he dismissed it at once. She wasn’t the sort of woman he wanted in his home. He wasn’t sure he ever wanted another woman that close.

Sally had sworn eternal love until he’d married her and taken her to bed. Afterward, she’d been a bubbling caldron of excuses. She enjoyed her wealthy way of life, but not her ardent husband. After a few weeks of her utter coldness, he lost most of his feeling for her. Her pregnancy had been the last straw. She hadn’t wanted a child, and she never fully adjusted to motherhood. For the few months before her death, she’d been different. There had been a new light in her eyes, a new radiance to her face. But not when her husband was near. She hated him, and never lost a chance to tell him so. Even Samantha suffered her hostility. At the last, Sally had seemed to resent her family bitterly.

The accident that had claimed her life had been in a buggy one rainy night. She’d gone to sit with a sick neighbor. When she hadn’t come home the next morning, he’d gone looking for her. He’d found her body in the wreckage of the buggy, half lying in a creek. It was on an out-of-the-way road, though, and nowhere near the sick neighbor. He’d assumed that she’d gotten lost in the dark, and his conscience had hurt him for letting her go alone. There was little love in their marriage, but he had loved her until her selfishness and greed killed his feelings for her.

He glanced toward his daughter Samantha, who was standing against the wall just inside the house, looking hunted. She was so fragile-looking, he thought. Odd, she’d been less high-strung since her mother’s death, but she was sad and shy, and, odd thing, she was very nervous around Curt and Lou. He did care for his child, but there was little love left in him. What was love, after all, he thought bitterly, but an illusion. A marriage for practical reasons had a better chance of success. As for the bedroom, there was no shortage of willing women to satisfy his hunger. He didn’t need a wife for that. His eyes sought Trilby, dark with masculine appreciation of her slenderness and grace.

Samantha approached the adults warily, managing a shy smile for Trilby. “Hello,” she said.

“Hello. It’s Samantha, isn’t it? You look very pretty,” Trilby said gently.

Samantha looked surprised at the compliment. “Thank you,” she mumbled self-consciously. “May I go to bed, now, Father?” she asked, with painful shyness.

“Certainly,” he said. He sounded very stiff and uncomfortable. Not like Trilby’s loving, affectionate father. “Maria will go with you.” He motioned to his housekeeper, who nodded and came forward quickly to herd the child upstairs.

“Don’t you tuck her in at night?” she asked, without thinking.

“I do not,” he answered, his voice hardly inviting further questions. “Will you have lime or fruit punch?”

“Lime, please.”

He filled a cup for her and placed it in a saucer. Her hands shook, though, and he had to hold them to help steady it. His eyes met hers again, narrow this time, and probing.

“Your hands are like ice. You can’t be cold?”

“Why can’t I?” she said defensively. “I’m thin. I feel chill more than most people.”

“Is it that, Trilby?” He lowered his voice, and his head, so that his eyes were very close to hers. His lean hands smoothed over the backs of hers. “Or is it this?” His thumb found the damp palm of one and drew over it in what was a blatantly sensual gesture, while his eyes kindled panic in her bosom.

The punch overflowed, fortunately missing her dress and his trousers.

“Oh, I’m—I’m so sorry!” she stammered, flushing.

“No harm done.” He motioned for one of the waiters and drew her out of the way while the man cleaned it up. Her parents and Ted were already mixing with the huge crowd, and no one seemed to have noticed the accident.

“I never used to be so clumsy,” she said nervously.

He drew her back into a small alcove that led to the lighted patio, its paper lanterns making artificial moons in the darkness. His hands framed her face and tilted it up to his dark eyes. “I don’t think it was clumsiness.”

He bent then, and she felt the warm, slow brush of a man’s mouth for the first time in her life. Even Richard had never once tried to kiss her. She’d had only dreams…She stiffened helplessly at the intimacy and a faint gasp passed her dry lips.

Thorn lifted his head. The expression on her face, in her eyes, was one she couldn’t have pretended. It was genuine surprise, mingled with awe, fascination. He had more than enough experience to recognize what she was feeling—and to know that it was new to her. Incredible, he thought, a woman of her experience being so stunned. Unless it was a pretense…

He bent again to make sure, but she jerked away from him, one slender hand going to her mouth. Above it, her gray eyes were like saucers in a delicately etched face blanched with uncertainty.

Thorn grew irritated with her for that dramatic facade. His face hardened; his eyes went cold. He stood watching Trilby, contempt in his very posture as he stared at her slender body.

“Don’t tell me you usually react that way to a man’s caress?” he asked, with smiling mockery. “There’s no need to pretend for me, Trilby. We both know that you aren’t unfamiliar with the feel of a man’s mouth on yours—even on your body.”

The sheer effrontery of the remark made her hand twitch. Her eyes flashed at him and she straightened. “If I had a gun, I’d shoot you, I swear I would! How dare you make such a statement to me!”

He raised his eyebrows. “What kind of treatment did you expect, Miss Lang? Do you think that prim act fooled me?”

She stared at him blankly. “What prim act?”

He looked vaguely mocking. “It’s not very effective coming from your sort of woman,” he drawled. “We both know you want a hell of a lot more from me than kisses.”

She gasped with furious indignation and gave him a fierce glare before she abruptly moved away from him, almost running. He poured himself a cup of punch and wandered off to mingle with his guests. But even as he smiled and wound through the crowd, he was thinking about Trilby. He really shouldn’t have baited her like that. Even if she’d been having a blatant affair with Curt, it didn’t make her a prostitute. She might actually love the man.

He didn’t understand why he’d said the things he had, except that thinking of her with his cousin made him angry.

His eyes finally found her, dancing with, of all people, Curt. The other man was about his height but much heavier and less abrasive. Curt had a ready smile and he liked women. They liked him, too, with his city manners and gentlemanly ways.

Thorn had been fond of him until his wife had thrown Curt up to him as an example of what she called a “civilized man.” He was tired of coming off second when compared to a dandy. Seeing Trilby in his arms made something explode inside him, especially when an icy, resentful Lou, Curt’s wife, sat seething as she watched them dance.

“How’s the Mexican problem?” Jack Lang asked, pausing beside him long enough to divert his attention.

“Getting worse, I think,” Thorn replied. He glanced at Trilby and away again. It was all he could do not to throw a punch at Curt for his duplicity. “Don’t let the women stray far from the house. We’ve had a few cattle stolen. One of my men tracked them down into Mexico. We never did catch the thieves.”

“You can’t fault the peons for taking the side of the insurgents,” Jack said patiently. “Conditions under Díaz are intolerable for the Mexican people, from what we hear from our vaqueros.”

“They’ve always been intolerable. They always will be,” Thorn said impatiently. “The average Mexican peasant has centuries of oppression behind him, from the Aztecs all the way up through Cortés and the Spanish and French, and, eventually, Díaz. These are a perennially oppressed people. They’ve been forced to knuckle under to everyone, especially the Spanish. It takes generations to overcome a suppressed attitude. They haven’t had enough time yet to break the pattern.”

“Madero seems to be doing it.”

“Madero is a little rooster,” Thorn mused. “His heart’s in the right place. I think he may surprise the Federales. They underestimate him. They’ll regret it.”

“His army is ragtag,” Jack protested.

“You need to read history,” came the dry reply. “It’s chock-full of ragtag armies taking over continents.”

Jack pursed his lips. “You’re amazingly astute.”

“Why, because I live on a ranch and spend my life around cattle and dust? I’m well read, and I have a friend who knows more about the past than he knows about the present. Did you meet my Eastern guest over there? McCollum’s an anthropologist, although he also teaches archaeology. He comes out with his students every spring to interview people from local Indian tribes and look for evidence of ancient cultures.”

“You don’t say! He never told me any of that,” Jack murmured, eyeing the tall, rough-looking blond man who was talking to an area businessman.

“McCollum won’t talk about his work. He’s opinionated enough about everything else,” Thorn said, with an amused smile.

McCollum glanced at Thorn and glowered. A minute later, he excused himself to the man with whom he was speaking and joined his host. “You’re talking about me, aren’t you?” McCollum demanded bluntly. “Behind my back, too.”

“I was telling my neighbor how much you know about the past,” he said, smiling. “This is Jack Lang. He owns Blackwater Springs Ranch. Jack, this is Dr. Craig McCollum.”

“Glad to know you,” Jack said. “Are you here to dig around?”