Susan Johnson (40 page)

“I’ve never killed a man with my bare hands …” Trey’s voice was almost a whisper now that it was over, now that the ferocious and jealous anger had passed.

Life was more ambiguous today, Hazard reflected philosophically, hearing the hesitancy in Trey’s voice, than when he had been young. In those days, to exact vengeance when a man like Jake Poltrain attacked was honorable. “Some men live longer than they should,” Hazard murmured softly, thinking the white man’s laws sometimes allowed men to live who didn’t deserve it.

“He said things about Empress,” Trey murmured, vignettes flashing vividly in his mind of Empress and Jake, and he inhaled deeply to steady his nerves.

“You miss her.” It wasn’t a question.

Trey’s mouth curved into a rueful smile. “More than I expected. I’ve never
missed
a woman before.”

Gazing at the ravages the week had produced, at the bandaged wound on one side of Trey’s head, at the smeared blood somehow forgotten on his bare feet, Hazard said very quietly, “If you’d care for some fatherly advice …”

Trey shrugged, not insolently but with resignation. “Why not? The last few days haven’t exactly been a glowing success.”

“You could go after her. I went after your mama.”

“This isn’t the same,” Trey replied, shaking his head briefly until the twinge of pain reminded him of the bandage. “Mama left because she thought you were dead. That’s understandable. Empress, on the other hand,” he noted wryly, “simply saw the Braddock-Black millions escape beyond her reach. Hardly a love match, Papa.”

“Valerie’s a shrewd, vicious woman,” Hazard reminded him. “You’ve considered that, of course.”

“Of course,” Trey said tersely. “Along with a thousand other possible explanations … none of which explains why Empress didn’t write. And she could have waited one day for my return from the legislature. That wouldn’t have been too much to ask.” He shrugged again. “She wanted the money. What can I say? And Valerie made it clear she’d fight tooth and nail to keep it. So Empress Jordan, consummate practical woman, intent on restoring the family fortune, decided to leave for greener pastures. Never underestimate,” Trey said with chill cynicism, “the nesting instincts of an empress.” It wasn’t as though he were unfamiliar with women after his money. Long ago he’d come to terms with the aphrodisiacal power of a fortune in gold, only with Empress everything had seemed different. Different from what? he thought grimly in the next second. Hell, she needed money a lot more badly than the wealthy young women he usually amused himself with. “Thanks, Papa,” he acknowledged politely, yielding finally to the indisputable, “for the concern, but I’ve run this through my mind so many times.” His sigh was visible in the drifting smoke from the brazier. “There’s no other explanation for her silence.”

Hazard’s first impulse as a father was to say, “Do you want me to bring her back?” Abducting wives, after all, had always been an acceptable activity in the Absarokee culture. But he stifled the impulse as anachronistic, although as a man of action, the enterprise had decided merit. At least the question of her silence would be answered once and for all. Over the years, though, he reflected ruefully, he’d learned to make adjustments to “civilized” manners, and he supposed abduction might be frowned on as a form of courtship. And at base, he decided, he would be interfering beyond his fatherly prerogatives.

Moving forward, he stepped over Jake’s body and, reaching his son, lay his hand on Trey’s shoulder. “Come home,” he said gently. “Your mother’s waiting.”

Trey was dressed in his buckskins and linen shirt when they emerged a few minutes later, and he courteously thanked Koo, who was waiting in the hall.

Hazard said, his eyes cool, his expression shuttered, “If you will be kind enough to see that everything is cleared up, I would be grateful.”

Nodding deferentially, Koo understood that he could name his price and it wouldn’t be questioned, but his silence would be expected. The soul of tact, he answered, “Consider it done, Mr. Black.”

The following day, Trey left with his family for the summer encampment, and in the mountains surrounded by friends, urged and cajoled to join in the hunting, horse racing, all the conviviality of the summer, he was too busy to brood. After a week he fasted alone on Bear Mountain and asked the little people to help him forget and find comfort. By the third day, his visions were vivid, potent with imagery and symbolism; he saw the children riding on huge, red-tailed hawks that changed before his eyes into mountain ponies; Empress, dressed in her cowboy gear, was seated across the fire from him, but she wore sparkling diamonds in her ears, and when he reached over the flames to touch her, she disappeared, her image replaced by Valerie. The little people took his hand and soothed him when he screamed in rage, calmed his resentment, renewed his strength. In mystical guises they moved in and out of his dreams, reminding him of his heritage and faith, and with their slow dance of life he came to understand on Bear Mountain in the burning heat of day and the cold beauty of the starlit nights that the validity of a man came from within. And forgetting evolved slowly, the seasons of the heart an endless pattern like the seasons of the earth.

On the fifth day Trey came down from the mountain and into the bosom of his family, renewed, refreshed, attuned to his Absarokee heritage and, if not complacent about the ease of forgetting Empress, realistic about the remedy of time. He stayed that summer in the mountains, helping his two half-brothers manage their father’s horse herds, which had been sent to the cooler pastures in the highlands. Stripped to his leggings, his long hair flying, he won all the races on Rally, as he did every summer, and there was pleasure in the victories. And while he spent more time with Rally than usual, his clan understood that he was heartsick over a woman and needed solitude.

By summer’s end, there was no trace of his purgatory at Koo’s; Trey was fit and deeply bronzed; ironically, he had
never been in better physical form. To the outside world, young, handsome, wealthy, he had everything except the one thing he wanted most—the woman he’d asked to marry. And for reasons that eluded him still, she’d decided to leave him.

I
n mid-September Trey was precipitously called home when Valerie delivered a daughter. The child was clearly a half-blood, and at first sight Valerie refused to touch her, immediately called the ranch, and informed them she was having the baby sent over. Several frantic phone calls located a wet nurse, and by the time the unnamed child arrived, Blaze had hastily outfitted the nursery.

The following day, when Trey rode in from the summer camp and first looked at the tiny infant lying in the pink-swathed cradle, he found himself instantly enchanted. Staring up at him with enormous eyes, she gooed and gurgled wet bubbles, and when she smiled a lopsided, erratic little smile, Trey was struck by the potent magic in a baby’s smiles.

“She’s very bright,” Blaze murmured proudly as she stood beside Trey. “Most babies don’t smile until much later.”

“You sound like a doting Grandmama,” Trey teased.

“She needs us,” Blaze replied quietly, tacitly referring to the Stewarts’ abandonment.

“She’s got me, I’ll tell you. What a charmer.” Trey touched
her tenderly on the top of her fuzzy head. “Does she have a name?”

“Not yet … we thought we’d wait until you arrived.”

“Didn’t Valerie—”

Blaze shook her head.

“Fucking bitch,” Trey murmured.

“There is a certain uncharitable quality to her personality,” Blaze agreed sarcastically, and then swiftly smiled as the baby began smacking her rosebud lips like a tiny bird looking for food. “She’s hungry again,” his mother said. “Isn’t that sweet?”

“Do you … I mean … how …” Trey faltered, baby care completely outside his realm of experience.

But in the ensuing days and weeks he spent hours each day in the nursery and learned to care for his infant foster-daughter.

She was named Belle because Hazard insisted.

“We’re not agreeing only because you’re an autocratic bully,” Blaze had teased him when the name was first discussed.

“Of course we are, Mother,” Trey had said with a smile. “You know how he sulks when he doesn’t get his way.”

“Very amusing,” Hazard had replied in mock affront. “It’s a perfect name.”

“If you’re a stage star,” Blaze had said.

“Or a female rodeo rider,” Trey added with a grin.

“You two can select a middle name,” Hazard had said pleasantly, familiar with the teasing.

“Magnanimous,” Trey said, his brows arched.

“One of your father’s endearing traits.”

But Hazard was indeed autocratic, and while his wife and son more than held their own as independent personalities, they didn’t begrudge Hazard his preference. The name Belle was, in fact, dramatic yet fondly affectionate, and she was, in all their eyes, truly beautiful. So the unwanted child who had drastically affected Trey’s life, Empress’s future, and Valerie’s bank account became the absolute center of attention at the ranch.

Hazard had a special fifty-piece baby-sized silver service engraved with her name and began training a sturdy little mountain pony for her first ride. Blaze completely redecorated
the nursery and sent to Paris for a royal layette, while Trey found himself understanding the finer points of wheedling oatmeal gruel and stewed fruit into a baby’s mouth.

And Belle Julia (Julia from Trey’s favorite Herrick poem) thrived.

The eight months of his contracted conjugal duties were over when Belle was one month old, and precisely on that day, Trey asked Valerie for a divorce.

He called on her late one afternoon, choosing the time after tea and before the evening’s dinner engagement, when Valerie would most likely be home alone.

She was still in her tea gown, the pale rose chiffon edged with limpid yards of alençon lace, serving as a delicate foil to her dark good looks. She glanced up leisurely when Trey strode in, imperturbable in her usual fashion. “This must not be a social call,” she murmured lazily, and tipped her head slightly to one side to gaze at him. Trey was dressed in dusty work clothes: leather jacket and vest over a sweat-drenched cotton shirt. His boots and trousers were covered with pale, gray grit.

“We’re putting in a new crusher at the Tracyville Mine,” he said, taking in her languorous pose on the damask settee. “Some people work for a living.”

“And others don’t,” she replied with a luxurious smile.

“As usual, we’re in agreement, I see,” Trey retorted dryly. He was standing, restlessly, just slightly inside the drawing room, having no intention of staying any longer than necessary.

“You’re always so bristly, Trey, darling. I know you can be altogether different … sit down and relax. We’ll talk about old times,” she murmured softly, and gracefully gestured to a nearby chair.

Her casual way of overlooking all the venal calamity she’d caused always grated on his nerves. “I want a divorce,” he said bluntly, disinterested in any hypocritical socializing.

“No.” Her voice was calm, her expression serene, and she reached for a glass of sherry, sparkling in the sunlight on a small marble table hideously shaped like a swan.

“No? Do you have a death wish?” he asked softly, thinking one powerful blow of that swan beak and his troubles would be over.

“I enjoy being Mrs. Braddock-Black.” She took a sip of sherry and said with a composure he found irritating, “Would you like some? It’s a very good Portuguese.”

“I don’t drink sherry, and if I
did
drink sherry, I wouldn’t drink it with you,” Trey replied in a voice taut with self-control. He hadn’t expected this. “You signed an agreement.” His words were arctic cold.

“I tore it up.”

“Don’t be simplistic,” he snapped curtly. “We have a copy.”

Her smile was classic innocence. “I’ll argue that it’s a forgery.”

Good God, he thought with disgust. “You never give up, do you?”

Her smile changed, and her spleen showed for a moment. “But then … there’s so much to give up, isn’t there, darling?” she drawled. “So, no … I don’t think I care to.”

How satisfying it would be, he thought for a flashing moment to wipe that smile from her face, and he felt his back stiffen under his sweaty shirt and leather jacket. “I always underestimate your avarice,” he murmured, his silvery eyes glinting like ice.

“My advantage, then,” she purred contentedly.

“This isn’t a chess game, Valerie.”

“But it is a game, isn’t it, darling?” There was a challenge in her throaty tone. Trey had always brought out the wildness in her, and his acute physical presence disturbed her in his alienation. He reminded her so often, and especially now, dust-grimed and leather-clad, of an animal—a great, dark predator. An exciting animal … no longer hers. And there was gratification in humbling him.

“If we’re talking games, let’s leave that to the lawyers,” Trey said simply. “I’ll check back with you when the preliminary rounds have been scored.”

And he walked out.

Hazard spoke to Duncan Stewart the next day, reminding him that they had signed documents negotiated prior to the marriage.