Trilby

Her gray eyes flashed at him. “I do most certainly know a few men!”

“Pretty city boys,” he shot back. “With nice manners and manicured nails and slicked-back hair.”

“There’s nothing wrong with manners, Mr. Vance,” she told him. “In fact, they rate rather high on my list of priorities.”

“You sound very indignant. I’ve seen a setting hen less ruffled than you look right now,” he said mockingly. “All feathers and fury because I’ve insulted your background.” The smile faded as he looked at her. “I buried my parents with my own two hands,” he said, shocking her into lifting her eyes. “They were killed by Mexican bandits raiding up into Arizona. I have no love for outlaws, and less for Eastern tenderfeet who think a man is measured by his vocabulary. Out here, Miss Lang, a man is measured by his ability to hold on to what’s his, by his ability to protect his loved ones and insure their survival. Pretty talk doesn’t stop bullets or build empires.”

“You sound very critical of city folk,” she began.

“I am critical of them. We had two Washington big shots out here after my parents were gunned down. We tried to explain the situation brewing in Mexico and the need for some protection for settlers here, and we got nothing but promises of ‘looking into the situation.’”

“Washington is quite far away,” she reminded him.

“Not far enough away for me,” he said shortly. “I couldn’t get any cooperation from Washington or the army, so I handled the problem myself.”

“The problem?”

“I tracked my parents’ murderers down across the border,” he explained.

“Did you find them?”

“Yes.” He glanced toward the band and motioned to them. They’d been winding down, but they began the song again.

She didn’t pursue the question. The look in his dark eyes had been fairly explicit. She had a terrible vision of men being gunned down.

He felt the quiver against his hand at her back and he nodded. “You’re going to have to get a little tougher if you want to live in this country.”

“Did I ever say that I wanted to live here, Mr. Vance?” she asked with soft hauteur. “I came because I had no choice.”

“You seem to like some things about it,” he continued, with faint sarcasm.

“That’s right, I do love the dust! I’m thinking of starting an export business so that I can share it with the world.” She couldn’t face another argument. “Can we stop dancing?”

“Why?” Her attitude put his back up. She was making his desert sound like some alien and unwanted land. She made him feel like some uncivilized savage. Well, perhaps he was, but he didn’t like her so superior attitude. She was hardly fit to judge him, considering her behavior with his married cousin.

His hand contracted, bringing her close against him so that she could feel his chest warm and hard against her breasts, even through several layers of cloth. “Don’t you like being held close to my body like this, Trilby?” he asked, with deliberate mockery, holding her shocked eyes.

“Of all the insufferable things to say!” She stiffened and stopped dancing. No man had ever talked to her like this. She stared at him as if she wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly.

“You do that so well,” he remarked cynically. “You almost convince me that I’ve shocked you.”

She was out of her depth, and disturbed. He made her feel things she didn’t want to feel. “Shock is hardly the right word. Please let me go,” she said tersely.

“Very well,” he replied, loosening his hold. “But don’t think you’ll escape me completely,” he added mockingly. “I don’t give up when something, or someone, interests me.”

The words had an ominous ring.

“I should prefer to become an object of interest to a fat sidewinder!” she returned.

Her analogy amused him. He smiled, which made it even worse. Trilby turned away and muttered to herself all the way back to her parents and Teddy.

It was one thing to be faced with a head-on accusation and reply to it. But Thorn Vance was only making nebulous innuendos, and she didn’t know how to handle them. She couldn’t imagine why he thought so badly of her.

If it had mattered, she might have pressed him for an answer. As it was, she told herself, Richard was the only man in her life. That being the case, what did Mr. Vance’s opinion matter?

Chapter Three

After Thorn’s contempt the night before, it was doubly shocking to Trilby when he suddenly appeared at the ranch the next morning and invited her to go for a ride in the desert.

He looked as if he expected her to refuse, and his smile was mocking. “Not on a horse, Trilby,” he drawled. “I’ve brought the touring car, as you can see.”

She glanced doubtfully at the big, open car. “I don’t like automobiles,” Trilby said. “We had one back in Louisiana and our chauffeur was forever snapping bands, and having flat tires, and skidding into the ditch on muddy roads. Even the one we have now is too fast,” she added, with an accusing glance at her grinning father.

“The buckboard would be less comfortable, I assure you.”

“Do go, Trilby,” her mother said gently. “It will do you good.”

“Indeed,” Jack Lang agreed.

Trilby could hardly tell them what Thorn had said to her the night before, or accuse him publicly of treating her like a loose woman. Her pride wouldn’t let her advertise his opinion of her.

“What about Dr. McCollum? Aren’t you neglecting him?” she asked, grasping at straws.

“Craig left on the El Paso train,” he said simply. Then he simply stared at her, his mocking smile daring her to produce another excuse.

She was no coward. “All right,” she said composedly. “I’ll go with you, Mr. Vance.”

She dressed in a long blue dress with lace-up shoes and a frilly hat. Then she wrapped a shawl around her shoulders—just in case the weather changed—and went out to Thorn.

He’d certainly impressed her parents with his apparent pursuit of Trilby. And the dignified gray suit he was wearing only added to the image he was projecting of a pillar of the community. Jack and Mary were beaming at him, their approval so obvious that it was embarrassing. Only Trilby knew that whatever Thornton Vance’s intentions were, they certainly weren’t as respectable as he looked.

“I’ll have her back before dark,” he assured them. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of her.”

“Why, of course you will, dear boy,” Jack Lang replied, as if it were a foregone conclusion and needed no emphasis.

Trilby sat quietly while Thorn cranked the car and came back to sit beside her. Naturally, she thought bitterly, it wouldn’t take him a half hour of sweat and muttered swear words to get it running, as it had Richard when he’d taken her and Teddy out riding. She held that competence against Thorn. It was just one more thing that set him apart from most men.

She waved as they sped off down the wide dirt road that led toward the mountains. She held her hat on, glad of the windscreen that kept the thick dust out of her face. The car her father drove was missing its windscreen. Teddy had accidentally knocked a baseball through it.

“Too fast?” Thorn asked, glancing ruefully at Trilby. “I’ll slow down a bit.”

He did, lifting his booted foot from the accelerator pedal. The car chugged along, so loud that conversation was next to impossible even if he’d been a talkative sort. He glanced out at the brownish hue of the land, where the grasses were dormant in autumn. The paloverde trees that dotted the landscape were glorious. He glanced at Trilby, wondering if she knew what they were. He pulled off the main road onto a smaller dirt one that led back to a secluded box canyon. As they drove, Trilby noticed that trees became more plentiful and the mountains loomed large and ghostly.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, delighted with the wooded canyon.

He pulled over, onto the side of the road, and cut off the engine. “Do you like it?”

“Why, it’s lovely,” she exclaimed. Her wide eyes were expressive. “I had no idea there were places like this in Arizona. I thought it was all cactus and sand.”