Susan Johnson (2 page)

“Just so long as ‘someday’ remains in the vague future,” Trey replied teasingly. “Come now, I want to give Erik my compliments, and you can tell him he’s worth another five thousand to you because of the
Gymnopédies.
”

Placing his hand lightly under her elbow, he began guiding her around the clusters of music lovers scattered throughout the high-ceilinged music room.

“I’m already paying him more than Liapounoff,” Emma protested as they skirted the governor and his wife with a smile and a nod.

“There,” Trey murmured, lifting a glass of champagne from a passing tray and handing it to her, “my point, exactly. He’s better than Liapounoff.”

“If you think he’s worth so much, you pay him.” And she drained her champagne in a single swallow, her style of drinking much like her speech syntax—unceremonious and direct.

Trey politely relieved her of her empty glass, set it in a potted palm they passed, and, turning back to her, said, “He won’t take money from me. Besides, Emma, my sweet,” he said with a lazy drawl, “you can’t take it with you.”

Stopping abruptly, she turned to him and, looking up into
his finely modeled face framed by long, sleek hair the color of midnight, inquired tartly in that flinty, businesslike tone that had made the bank she owned first in the territory, “What are you going to do for me if I sink another five thousand into your friend?”

He replied in quiet, measured tones that wouldn’t carry. “I’ll come to one of your dinners and entertain that grandniece of yours you’re always pushing at me.” And when he broke into a smile and winked, a déjà vu image of his father twenty-some years ago flashed into her mind: every woman had wanted him—like this boy.

“Poor thing thinks she’s in love with you,” she said with candor and one arched brow of appraisal. “I’ll give you
all
my money if you marry her. Going to give it to her, anyway,” she added frankly.

“Lord, Emma,” Trey replied, looking shocked not by Emma’s bluntness but at the thought of marriage, “do I look like I’m up for auction? I’ve more money than I need.”

“But you haven’t got a wife,” she amiably pointed out.

“And I don’t
want
one!” His voice had risen enough to draw attention to them, and casting his heavy brows up in exasperation, he carefully lowered his voice and murmured, “Come
on
, Emma, don’t make it so tough. Just give Erik the extra five grand, and I promise on my father’s coup stick to be so nice to your grandniece, she’ll smile for a week.”

“Conceited rascal, you’re too handsome—like your father. I knew him before he met your mother, you know, when every female in Virginia City had decided they’d liberalize their attitudes and invite an Indian to dinner.”

“It’s not the looks, Emma. Women just want what they can’t have. They see it as a challenge,” he demurred, genuinely unpretentious for a man who had every reason to be vain.

“Someday you’ll find someone you’ll want to marry.” Emma believed in having the final word.

“In the meantime … we’re talking five thousand dollars.” The last thing in the world Trey Braddock-Black cared to talk about was his marriage; that subject was on his list of priorities immediately after a month’s stay in Antarctica.

“Dinner at my house … tomorrow night.”

He grinned and put out his hand. “You have,” he said very softly, “yourself a deal.”

“I’m going to see him later,” Valerie was archly saying to Cyrilla Shoreham over a silver tea-service set on a small chinoiserie table between their chairs, “if you must know.”

“I
don’t
believe you.”

You snide little bitch, Valerie thought, just because he’s never looked your way. “Would you like to tag along? I could hide you in the closet,” she answered in blasé affectation.

“Are you going to
Trey’s
?” Cyrilla asked, wide-eyed and fascinated.

“He invited me over.” Valerie adjusted the lace at her cuff and reached for her teacup. “We’re very dear friends,” she murmured, showing her fine white teeth briefly. “I thought you knew. In fact”—she waited theatrically for a moment—“I think he’s going to propose to me soon.”

“No!” Cyrilla’s gasp was so strident, several heads turned in curiosity. “I don’t believe you!” And this time her doubt wasn’t spiteful envy but thunderstruck astonishment.

Valerie shrugged a delicate, ladylike lift of her shoulder. “You should,” she replied complacently. “He’s quite fond of me.”

The object of her conversation found himself disconcerted an hour later when he and Erik walked into his town apartment to find Valerie waiting.

“How did you get in?” Trey asked in a quiet voice, making a mental note to have a word with the manager.

“Harris let me in.” Valerie’s smile was gracious, her pose collected, as if she lounged every day on Trey’s bargello banquette. The problem was, of course, on many occasions last fall she had lounged, usually nude, on that exact banquette.

But Trey hadn’t seen her for some time; he never saw women for any length of time, allaying the universal female tendency toward possessiveness. “Erik, allow me to introduce Valerie Stewart,” he said smoothly, his expression bland, the small irritation of having his privacy invaded invisible. “Valerie, Erik Satie.”

Nodding slightly to Satie’s bow, Valerie smiled up at Trey. “Will you be long?” Her inquiry was rude and pointed.

And for an awkward moment Trey debated being rude in turn.

“If you had other plans …” Erik began, looking uncomfortable and more rumpled than usual in one of the twelve gray corduroy suits he favored.

“No,” Trey quickly responded. “Sit down, Erik.” He gestured toward the liquor cabinet. “The Pernod’s over there.” Then, turning back to Valerie, Trey offered his hand. “Could I speak with you privately?”

Their discussion in the foyer was brief.

“Erik’s only here for two days,” he said.

“But you said you’d see me later,” she replied.

“I’m sorry if you misunderstood,” he said. “We’re going to practice one of Erik’s new compositions.”

“
When
will I see you?”

He didn’t feel she would respond well to never. “How about a little bibelot from Westcott Jewelers as a token rain check?”

Her eyes lit up, and his smile was one of relief. He despised scenes.

He brushed her cheek with his fingers, his mind already back on musical scores. “Run down there now and pick out whatever you like. I’ll call them and tell Westcott you’re coming in.”

Reaching up on tiptoe, she kissed him. “You’re a darling,” she cooed happily.

“Thank you,” he said.

Three days later, after having seen Erik off, Trey and his two cousins were comfortably disposed in the parlor of Lily’s sporting house, contemplating between drinks and idle conversation the gathering dark clouds visible through Lily’s swagged and fringed bow windows.

“There’s a storm coming in over the mountains with that shift in wind. The cattle were turned around already this morning on our way into town. Finish that drink and then let’s head out.”

“Let’s stay the night instead,” Trey replied mildly, pouring himself another drink. “No reason to go back home tonight.”

His cousins, Blue and Fox, exchanged dark, silent glances of futility and understanding. They both knew why Trey was in no rush to return home. His parents’ party that night included Arabella McGinnis, another woman who without subtlety regarded their cousin as her prospective bridegroom. After having to deal with a persistent Valerie and then Emma’s grandniece, Trey wasn’t in the mood for cloying women. That was one of the reasons they were at Lily’s.

“You don’t really want to dance attendance on sweet young misses tonight at Mama’s dinner, now do you?” Trey asked. “An honest answer; no duty replies.”

And at Trey’s wicked grin they both broke into smiles. It wasn’t fair, putting Lily’s up against dinner companions who blushed coyly at every bland comment and giggled when they weren’t blushing. “You make the excuses tomorrow, then,” Blue said.

“No problem. Mama knows how insufferable Arabella can be, and if father and Ross McGinnis weren’t business associates”—he shrugged negligently—“hell, I wouldn’t have to put up with Arabella’s simpering pursuit.”

“I thought you liked luscious blondes.”

“I do, but I like a touch of brains too.”

“Since when?” the two other men drawled in unison.

Trey’s dark brows rose slightly. He knew his reputation, and they were right. He liked women—for offering life’s greatest pleasure. It wasn’t their minds he was primarily interested in. “Point taken,” he said. “Now could we change the subject?”

“Rumor has it Arabella’s been sleeping with Judge Renquist.”

Trey smiled. Him too? He knew for a fact that she had enough voluptuous blonde energy to entertain an army. Just as well. Maybe she’d be deflected from her matrimonial plans. He was running out of polite excuses. “It’s Tuesday, and there’s a damn blizzard brewing outside,” Trey said, intent on discarding the topic of Arabella. “Why are we knee-deep in rich old men?”

“They’re selling two Chinese girls tonight, I hear,”
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Blue said.
“
That’s
why Lily’s is so full, even in this hellish weather,” Trey replied, his pale eyes scanning the room.

“Have you ever seen a sale?”

“No. Have you?”

“No.”

“Are you going to bid, Trey, honey?” the curvaceous brunette snuggled against him murmured playfully.

“Lord, no,” he said, lifted the last of his liquor to his mouth, and drained the heavy cut-glass tumbler.

“I didn’t
think
you liked yellow flesh,” the dark-eyed woman breathed in a throaty voice.

He laughed and glanced down at the woman held familiarly in the curve of his arm, amusement spilling out of his luminous eyes. Setting his empty glass aside, he signaled for another bottle, then said with a half smile, “You’re talking to the wrong person about skin color, Flo, darling.”

Trey Braddock-Black was proud of his Absarokee lineage. And to those who looked with contempt at skin a shade different, he took special pleasure in reminding them who he was. “Hazard Black’s son,” he’d say. “We used to own Montana.” And damn near still did, some pettishly thought. The original gold from his father’s first mine; the newer copper reserves, enough for twenty lifetimes; his mother’s wealth; Hazard Black’s power; the private Absarokee army at his back that Trey called “family”—all contributed a certain arrogance to the young man, who, back from four years of school out East, seemed intent on playing now, as hard as he worked the small empire that would someday be his.

Trey and his two companions had been drinking in Helena’s finest brothel since they’d stamped in, cold and snowy, across Lily’s imported pink mille-fleur carpet early that afternoon. “Need a brandy to warm my blood, Lily, darling,” Trey had exclaimed, pulling off his heavy buffalo coat. “Not fit for man or beast out there today.” His two friends had discarded their fur-lined coats as he spoke to the well-preserved blond proprietress of the plush sporting house, but they kept their guns holstered low on their hips, and their eyes held a curious alertness.

A fine brandy, French and dear, was promptly produced, and the three men were on their second bottle now. The gray, chill afternoon turned early into a winter twilight, and by the
time dusk had settled, each of the men had one of Lily’s pretty girls beside him. The parlor had filled as evening approached, and light piano music mingled unobtrusively with the low murmur of conversation, expensive cigar smoke, and the scent of high-priced cologne. Lily’s establishment was the type that catered to rich men’s pursuit of pleasure. It was cozy, costly, and handsomely decorated with authentic rococo furniture and large urns of hothouse roses … not as refined as Madame Pompadour’s Petit Trianon, perhaps, but a very close approximation for the windswept prairies of Montana.

With a freshly refilled glass, Trey looked comfortable in the scented, gilded room, sprawled dark and powerfully lithe on an embroidered settee like any spoiled prince of the realm. Although a half breed, he was endowed with all the magnificent classic beauty of his father’s Absarokee forebears: a straight finely proportioned nose; bone structure so splendid any sculptor would weep with envy; heavy, dark brows that slashed above deep-set, restless eyes remarkable for their silver luminosity; and his tall, broad-shouldered frame, for which the Absarokee were justly famous, revealed beneath its elegant sprawl an unmistakable impression of raw strength.

Conventional society was graced occasionally by this handsome scion of fortune—too handsome for his own good, many said—and young misses had seen him as an enviable prize since he’d entered adolescence. But Trey conducted himself a shade too recklessly, in too many bedrooms, to please wary deb fathers, although he tantalized their daughters with a careless, indiscreet charm that left them all breathlessly eager. Not withstanding his wildness, deb mothers considered him eminently suitable. Millionaires were popular son-in-laws.

He preferred Lily’s quiet parlor, though, to dalliances with willing society misses; he enjoyed her unaffected, open friendship, and occasionally he took up with one of Lily’s young ladies. With his dark good looks, audacious charm, and exceptional skill and endurance in bed, he was universally adored at the Petit Trianon of the prairies.

“Dammit, Lily!” a well-tailored older man, one of the new cattle barons, said, remonstrating with his hostess in a slurred bellow. “You said seven o’clock for the sale. Damned if it ain’t half past already.”

“Relax, Jess,” Lily replied calmly, the glow of the painted lamp globes producing a shimmering sparkle in each tiny facet of her diamond ear drops. She smoothed a hand across the trim waist of her Worth gown and added, “Chu’s a little late, is all … He’ll show up. Besides, Jess, sweet, this is only a service I offer, to satisfy my clients. I’ve no personal stake in it, or control over his timetable.”

The sale of Chinese girls was more common in China Alley than at Lily’s, where it was rare and only presented when customer requests became insistent. In China Alley the phenomenon was prevalent, supported by several thousand years of tradition that not only approved but also endorsed the expediency of disposing profitably of unwanted daughters.
²