Even before he turned to the group, Jessy felt a cold chill of foreboding run down her spine. She mentally braced herself for what was to come.
“She wants me to come to the funeral.” It was more or less a general announcement, but Jessy knew it was her reaction he was seeking.
“You’re going, of course.” She said it matter-of-factly, without betraying the sick feeling in her stomach.
His mouth slanted in a crooked smile that was so full of warmth it was like a caress. “I knew you would understand.”
“Of course.” Jessy suspected that she understood better than he did. Even though his marriage to Tara had ended years ago, he still felt a lingering sense of responsibility toward her—a husband’s responsibility, if not to Tara, then to his dream of Tara. And it was his dream image of Tara that was the most dangerous thing.
Ty shifted his attention to Chase. “Ballard gave me a list of places with on-premise sale barns. A couple of them are in Texas. I planned on checking out a few of them after the holidays, but I might as well look them over while I’m down there for the funeral. Before we can decide whether we want to go the private auction route, we’ll need to know the type of facility it would require, plus the cost of construction.”
Chase concurred.
On the day of the funeral, one of Texas’s infamous blue northers blew in, shrouding the sky with heavy gray clouds. The outside temperature plummeted to near the freezing mark.
But it was warm inside the hushed church. Almost too warm. Ty sat next to Cat, his topcoat draped across his lap and his dress black Stetson resting atop it. The place was full to capacity with mourners, many notables among them as befitted someone with the status and wealth of E.J. Dyson.
Baskets of elaborate floral arrangements crowded the sanctuary, their cloying fragrance permeating the already stifling air. When the minister at last asked the gathering to bow their heads in prayer, drawing the service to a close, Ty breathed out in relief, even though it brought nearer the moment he dreaded.
Having flown into Fort Worth only that morning, he had yet to catch more than a glimpse of Tara before the memorial service had begun. There was a part of him that still wasn’t sure why he was there, or what he would say to her when they did meet. But he already felt the awkwardness of it.
He stood in silence while the pallbearers brought the ornate pewter-gray casket up the main aisle. Tara followed it, leaning heavily on the arm of an older gentleman. Dramatic in black, she wore an elegant Chanel suit, unadorned with any trimmings. On her head was a small and simple black hat with a half-veil attached, creating a sheer shadow over the upper half of her face. Her only concession to jewelry was the black opal ring on her finger.
As Tara came up the aisle, she kept her gaze fixed on a point somewhere ahead of her, glancing neither to the right nor the left. There was a woodenness to her movements that was completely unnatural, and a pallor to her grief-numbed face that couldn’t be faked.
“Oh, Ty,” Cat murmured when she saw Tara. “Look at her. Have you ever seen so much pain?” she asked in a voice husky with empathy.
“I know,” he murmured in return.
“I remember the way I felt at Mother’s funeral.” Cat paused and brushed away a tear that slipped off her lashes. “It hurt so very much.”
In reply, Ty curved an arm around her and rubbed a hand over her shoulder, remembering his own pain that day. In this, he had no difficulty empathizing with the loss Tara felt.
Together, he and Cat joined the long receiving line as the mourners filed by to extend their sympathies. To each, Tara responded with a faint nod that was almost robot-like, her gaze barely focusing on any of them.
Then it was their turn. Cat stepped up, Ty at her side. The first glimmer of recognition registered in Tara’s dark eyes. “Cat.” The word was almost a sob as Tara reached out with needing hands. “Where’s—” A slight turn of her head and she saw him.
“Tara,” Ty began, but Tara’s knees had already buckled as she sank in a dead faint.
Ty caught Tara before she fell and scooped her into his arms amid a rush of concerned gasps and alarmed murmurs. As others pressed in to offer aid, one of the funeral directors intervened and quickly ushered Ty to an out-of-the-way anteroom, complete with a small cushioned sofa.
With Cat at his heels, Ty crossed to the sofa and laid Tara on it while Cat hurriedly pushed a pair of throw pillows behind her, propping Tara in a reclining position. After closing the door, the funeral director joined them, taking a vial of ammonia from his pocket and uncapping it. He waved it briefly under Tara’s nose.
There was a protesting movement of her head as she surfaced groggily. “She’ll be fine,” the director announced. He was about to add more when he was interrupted by a sharp knock at the door.
After a disoriented second, Tara focused her eyes, black with grief, on Ty. “You came.” Her cry was almost a whimper as she reached out both arms to him. “Oh, God, hold me, Ty. Hold me.”
With that one simple gesture, she eliminated all need for words. Sitting on the edge of a cushion, Ty gathered her close. Tara wound both arms around his neck, buried her face in his suit jacket, and wept brokenly. “I needed you so much. So very, very much.”
A corner of her hat snagged on his jacket, knocking the hat askew. Ty slipped off the small hat with its attached veil, passed it to Cat, then stroked a smoothing hand over Tara’s silken black hair.
“It’s all right,” he murmured in comfort. “I’m here now.”
A second man appeared at Ty’s elbow, impeccably dressed in a dark suit and tie, a pair of steel-rimmed glasses precisely matching the sprinkling of gray in his neatly trimmed hair. “I’m Dr. Davis Parker,” he identified himself, his fingers already reaching to seek the pulse in Tara’s wrist. “I’ve been attending Tara since her father’s death.”
“No,” Tara moaned in protest and pulled her arm away from his searching fingers, then pressed even more tightly against Ty. “Make them go away, Ty. Please.”
“She’s distraught.” The doctor took a small, brown prescription bottle from his pocket and glanced at the hovering funeral director. “Could we have a glass of water?”
“I have one right here.” He handed a foam cup to the doctor.
“Tara, take one of these.” The doctor shook out a pill and offered it to her. “It will make you feel better.”
She shook her head then lifted her tear-wet face to Ty. “Make him leave me alone. Make them all leave me alone,” she insisted in a sobbing voice. “I don’t want all these people around me anymore. Make them go.”
“But, Mrs. Calder,” the funeral director interposed in his most soothing voice, “we still have the graveside services. You know your father would want—”
“My father is dead!” Tara practically screamed the words. “He won’t care whether I’m there or not. How could he? He’s dead.” She abruptly began to laugh and sob uncontrollably at the same time.
“She’s hysterical,” the doctor announced grimly. “I think it would be best if we took her home, where I can safely sedate her.”
“Is there a side exit?” Ty directed the question at the funeral director.
“There is.” The man nodded. “I’ll arrange for a car to be brought around at once.”
“Do that,” Ty said, then attempted to make Tara understand. “We’re going to take you home. Okay?”
But instead of being comforted, his statement seemed to throw her into a frenzy. “Don’t leave me, Ty. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.” The words came in panicked sobs that clutched at him as frantically as her hands.
“We aren’t going anywhere, Tara,” Cat assured her. “We’ll stay with you as long as you want.”
Ty stiffened in silent opposition to his sister’s unqualified promise. As broken and pitiful as Tara was at this moment, he was still very much aware of the familiar shape and warmth of the woman pressed so tightly against him. The heady, signature scent of Tara’s perfume swirled around him, evoking memories of the fire and passion they had once shared.
But for the time being, Ty said nothing to contradict Cat’s claim. That discussion could wait until later, when Tara was home and sedated. He concentrated instead on comforting the weeping woman in his arms.
The funeral director returned within minutes, accompanied by two assistants. With Ty carrying Tara and the others forming a phalanx around her, they whisked her out a side entrance to a waiting stretch limousine.
The minute Ty attempted to deposit Tara on the rear passenger seat, her clutching hands tightened their grip in panic. “Don’t leave me, Ty. Don’t leave me,” she whimpered in a sobbing, little-girl voice.
“I’m not,” he assured her. “We’re just getting in the car so we can go home.”
With reluctance, Tara relinquished her hold on him long enough for Ty to climb into the limo, but she was back in his arms the instant he was seated. The doctor held the door open for Cat while she scrambled into the rear seat next to them.
“I’ll meet you at the house,” the doctor told them and closed the door, slapping the roof of the limo twice, signaling the chauffeur to move out.
In the unnatural silence of the limousine, they glided along the streets, skirting the silver-skinned towers of downtown Fort Worth. Even the brick-topped Camp Bowie Boulevard was reduced to a nonintrusive purr.
Turning off the boulevard, they wound their way into the exclusive River Crest area, long favored by the Forth Worth elite. The chauffeur traveled a road that snaked along the hills that rose above the Trinity River, and eventually pulled up to a pair of iron gates. After the smallest of pauses, the gates swung open, admitting them to the private grounds of the Dyson residence.
After following the driveway’s looping curve, the limo rolled to a silent stop in front of the Dysons’ twenty-thousand-square-feet, Italianate mansion. Before the engine was switched off, a handful of servants spilled from the house, clearly anticipating their arrival.
With Tara cradled in his arms like a baby, Ty climbed out of the vehicle and found himself face to face with the ever-efficient head of the household staff, a balding man with the improbable name of Brownsmith. Of indeterminate age, the man no doubt looked fifty when he was twenty, and would still look like fifty at the age of eighty. He disdained the term “butler”, preferring the title of “houseman” to the Dysons.
His recognition of Ty was instant. “Mr. Calder. I regret that we should meet again under such tragic circumstances.” Despite his constant attempt to adopt the clipped, precise speech of his English counterparts, his voice had never lost its distinctive Texas drawl. To eliminate any need for a response from Ty, Brownsmith added quickly, as he pivoted with a gesturing sweep of his hand, “If you’ll bring Miss Tara this way.”
With the houseman in the lead, Ty carried Tara into the house, across a marbled foyer, styled to resemble an interior courtyard, up a palatial grand staircase, and along a wide corridor to a suite of rooms. All the while Brownsmith directed a flurry of scurrying servants.
Two maids waited to guide Ty through the sitting room to the bedroom, decorated in a daring but deft mix of scarlet and gold, softened with delicate touches of pink.
Again Tara protested the separation when Ty attempted to lay her on the bed. “No. Don’t go.”
“I’m not going anywhere. But you can’t get in bed with your shoes on,” he chided, which apparently made sense to Tara because she sank onto the satin coverlet, lying quietly while he slipped off her black pumps. A maid was there to take them from him before he could drop them on the floor.
“Dr. Parker should be here directly. He had to stop at his clinic to pick up some medication for Miss Tara,” the houseman explained, then lifted his head sharply, catching some sound that escaped Ty’s hearing. He stepped to the window, parting the sheers to look out. “Here he is now. I’ll bring him right up.” He moved away from the window, issuing orders to the maids as he went. “Close the draperies, and see that Mr. Calder has a chair by the bed so that he can sit with Miss Tara.” On his way into the sitting room, Brownsmith met Cat in the connecting doorway. He immediately intercepted her. “Forgive me but these are Miss Tara’s private quarters.”
Turning, Ty saw Cat. “That’s my sister, Brownsmith.”
The houseman recovered quickly. “Miss Cathleen,” he said, making use of his instant recall to address her by her full given name. “You have grown into a lovely young woman. Forgive me for failing to recognize you.”
“Of course,” Cat replied as he waved her into the room, then disappeared himself into the sitting room. “How could he remember me when I barely remember him?”
Ty nodded in agreement. “You couldn’t have met more than once or twice.” Then Tara was reaching for him, on the verge of panic again.
Even after the doctor administered the sedative, Tara clung to him, locking his hand in a death grip and refusing to let go. With the doctor’s departure, the maids withdrew, leaving Ty and Cat alone in the darkened room with Tara. They spoke little and then in hushed voices.
Late in the afternoon, it started to rain. Ty sat by the bed and listened to the sound of the wind-whipped rain pelting the windowpanes. It was a lonely sound, made more so by the dim light and the thick silence.