Susan Johnson (43 page)

Trey’s eyes drifted over Kit’s sprawled form in the chair opposite him, and he thought a moment before answering. “No,” he said, filling his glass again. “Have they you?”

“No.”

Trey laughed. “You see, then.” Sliding lower in his chair, he leaned his head back. “It’s not the walking out,” he said by way of explanation, “I’m not that egotistical. It’s the woman who’s plaguing me.”

“Why?” Curiosity and sympathy blended in Kit’s inquiry.

“If I knew I could put it to rest. She was …” Trey sighed softly. “… everything—hot and cold, soft and steel-sharp and so damned alive …” His voice trailed off, and his teeth flashed briefly in a grimace. “An adventuress to put even Valerie to shame.”

“Valerie does have a certain talent,” Kit acknowledged tranquilly, “you have to admit, but you haven’t seen Macao yet. The women there are”—he grinned—“imaginative, even inspirational at times. You should come there with me. My yacht’s in San Francisco. What better way to forget … what’s her name?”

“Empress.”

Kit’s eyebrows rose. “Modest name.”

“It fits her,” Trey said. “The bitch.”

E
mpress spent the fall in Paris modestly secluded, at home to only her closest friends as she awaited the birth of her child. As her time drew near, her thoughts turned increasingly to Trey, natural, perhaps, for every mother, she told herself, to be emotionally susceptible to the father of one’s child. She had struggled to obliterate images of a tall, dark-haired half-blood all summer, had purposefully partaken of society’s frivolity, had smiled until her face hurt, determinedly attended luncheons and shopping, dinners and dances where men paid her enormous attention. Time and activity would gradually diminish her fierce longing, she reflected, distract her from the potent memories, divert her with new festivities, make Trey nothing more than a dim remembrance.

Wretched inequity—the maxim, time heals all, for despite the passing months, Trey was like a brooding treasure in her mind, stored away and precious, her first lesson in the power of love. However unforgettable the man, though, Empress was adamant that he shouldn’t know of the baby she carried. He hadn’t come. If he loved her, he would have, but he hadn’t
and she knew why. Restless, dissolute, and spoiled, he’d found someone else. Valerie’s stately image rose in her mind, superimposed on an endless line of other females, all complaisant and adoring. He didn’t deserve to know of his child, she fumed in a fit of pique, and then a worse thought, black and bitter, slid past the anger and wounded her: He wouldn’t care, she had to admit, if he knew.

Sitting in the familiar rose garden of the Hotel Jordan under a warm autumn sun, just as she had so many times in the past, the scent of late roses sweet on the air, Empress wondered for a brief moment whether all the years of expatriation and adversity and the troubled memories of Trey were all some dream. Here on the carved stone bench crafted when the Sun King was expanding France’s borders and the Comtes de Jordan had already served seven previous kings, it seemed as though she’d never left this secluded, walled garden with its playing fountain and carefully raked paths. As if Mama and Papa were only behind the drawing-room windows, and she had no cares beyond deciding on the most perfect shade of ribbon for her bonnet. Had everything been a quantum leap into an unreal fantasy and she’d wake to find herself fifteen again?

But in the next pulse of her heart the baby kicked and reality came surging back. She was no longer that young, naïve girl; she was no longer remotely like the young girl waiting for Mama and Papa to walk through the French doors. Responsibility for her family had abruptly curtailed her childhood, and Trey Braddock-Black had seen to her introduction into full-fledged womanhood. She should hate him, and she did, for not chasing after her like a heartsick lover, but she loved him, too, the love and hate coexisting, entwined like a convoluted, serpentine pattern with neither beginning nor end. And in all the months since her departure from Montana, she’d not been able to grasp the essential thread that would unravel the whole and bring her peace.

He hadn’t cared enough to come for her, she thought with a small sigh that drifted away on the warm autumn air, and while she understood that it was naïve to think she was any different from the other women in his life, she had still hoped. Hoped he would find he couldn’t live without her. The poetic phrase sounded ridiculous in the next instant, as if Trey
Braddock-Black’s life could come to a standstill because of her. “Couldn’t live without her” should be rose-garlanded and cupid-borne, a conceit as unreal as the cow jumping over the moon … frail magic against reality.

What was he doing now? she wondered, since apparently he was living without her very well. Was he filling the rooms of his newest lover, or perhaps his wife, with her favorite flowers, or buying her beautiful clothes? What kind of fur would he choose for his newest infatuation?

And while Empress’s melancholic reverie took command of her mind …

Trey, in contrast to her speculation, was alone, lying in the golden autumn grasses of a clearing with only Rally for company. And while his paint cropped on grass, looking up occasionally as though she were listening, Trey talked to her about Empress. Leaning on one elbow, his torso bare, his moccasins kicked off, he lounged lean and bronzed under the unseasonably warm sun. “She would have liked it here,” he said, gazing over the small meadow bordering a bubbling stream. “It’s like the homestead on Winter Mountain.” But then he remembered that Guy was a count now and the rough cabin on Winter Mountain was something to forget … along with everything else in Montana. “And then again, Rally,” he said very softly, “I don’t think Empress Jordan would appreciate the simplicity. She’s after greener pastures and bigger game in the peerage, and all the glistening baubles.”

Empress’s preoccupation with her memories was punctuated suddenly by Eduard’s piercing cry, and abruptly she looked up in alarm, but his face was wreathed in smiles as he ran toward her. She smiled back at her young brother, struggling up the terraced incline on chubby toddler legs, happy that he was happy. She hadn’t been the only one missing Trey: Eduard still slept with the snowshoes he’d insisted on bringing from Montana.

A sudden excessive longing washed over her, and she sighed into the sunny sky, “Why didn’t you come for us, Trey?” She desperately missed him today, missed his embrace,
his warmth, the beauty of his smile, his hot-blooded wanting of her.

“Tiger Tom Cat’s got kittens!” Eduard squealed, his short legs laboring as he negotiated the last several yards. “Me want one! Me, me
want
one!”

Apparently Tiger Tom Cat was misnamed, Empress thought whimsically as Eduard reached her and his dimpled hand tugged on hers.

“Come see!” he shouted, excitement dancing in his eyes.

And Trey’s shining memory was displaced by sticky hands and high-pitched demands.

A month later, long after midnight, the prestigious doctor who attended all the royal accouchements shook his head sadly and said to Adelaide, “There’s nothing more I can do.” The large room was oppressive with heat and the odor of birthing, and in the predawn hours a gloom had settled over the interior as if the shadows had crept in from the dark corners and shrouded all in depression.

Empress had been in labor for a day and a half, thirty-six hours of dizzying white pain and mounting pressure, of screaming agony. The baby was in a breech position, and the doctor had done nothing but say, “Nature will take its course,” until moments ago Empress’s pulse had dropped dangerously low, and her screaming, which had subsided in the last few hours into whimpers, stopped.

“Incompetent!” Adelaide hissed angrily. “Imbecile! I’ll see you ruined, you bungler,” she swore at his retreating back and chastised herself for waiting so long to dismiss him. Although he’d been in attendance at both her deliveries, since hers had been uneventful, the extent of his inadequacies were only now apparent. Terrified, she sent for Beatrix, screaming at the servants she sent dashing off to collect her old nurse. Beatrix had been more of a mother to her than her own mother, and in times of peril or desolation she always called on her.

A scant twenty minutes later, her old nurse was shown upstairs and Adelaide burst into tears. “I should have called you sooner,” she sobbed as she fell into the open arms of the old woman who had raised her.

Beatrix patted her back in brief consolation, and then, in
the quiet voice that had calmed all her childhood fears, said, “Hush, hush,
mon bébé
, I’m here now and you must be strong.” Releasing her grown-up baby, she murmured, “Come now,” touching the tip of Adelaide’s nose like she always had to cajole compliance, “wash your hands and help me.” Without waiting for an answer, Beatrix went to the porcelain sink in the corner of the room and began scrubbing her hands. “We don’t need a fancy doctor to bring this baby into the world. My Mama and Grandmère were birthing babies long before the fancy doctors were born.”

“Thank God,” Adelaide said with a heartfelt sigh, her burden of guilt lifting, feeling more confident by the moment.

“Don’t thank God,” her old peasant nurse said with iconoclastic pragmatism, wiping her hands briskly. “I’ll be more help, but if you want to pray, pray that this young lady’s uterus doesn’t tear. We’re going to turn this baby around.”

It was a grim, taut, wrenchingly slow process as Beatrix massaged the baby slowly clockwise and Adelaide nervously followed orders to hold or press or push when the old woman murmured her instructions. “No! No!” she shouted once when Adelaide’s pressure eased slightly and the baby slipped back. Adelaide broke into tears as their slow progress instantly reversed, and her shoulders sagged in defeat.

“Wipe your eyes, child, and we’ll begin again,” Beatrix said calmly, although she’d begun to fear for Empress’s stamina. Her pulse was erratic, faint, the contractions slowing; even if they were able to turn the baby, she might not have the strength needed to complete the delivery. “Now this time,” Beatrix cautioned, “hold
firmly.
”

They were both drenched in sweat an hour later when, millimeter by reluctant millimeter, the small infant was persuaded to attempt the birth canal in more acceptable fashion. Thankfully Empress had remained unconscious through the laborious maneuver, but as the contractions forced the baby downward, her eyes opened in a restless flutter, as though she knew there weren’t much time left. Though only half conscious, existing in a curious state between lethargy and agony, a dreadful alarm forced its way through the exhaustion and pain, and a harsh, angry face, beautiful even in its wrath, materialized like a vision of a vengeful god. “Trey!” she cried, half rising as though she’d seen a ghost. “Don’t tell Trey,”
she whispered, sinking back and shutting her eyes against the frightening specter.

She wasn’t lucid, Adelaide decided as she comforted her, stroking her shoulder gently. “Trey was her husband’s pet name,” Adelaide murmured as Beatrix looked up quickly from the imminent birth. “He died in America six months ago.”

“Poor child,” Beatrix muttered softly, supporting a small, dark head as Empress’s child entered the world. “We’ll have to make certain your Mama lives,” she crooned quietly, easing the small body outward with exquisite care, “so you won’t be an orphan.”

The baby boy was swarthy-skinned, strong and healthy, with fluffy dark hair when it was rubbed dry, and enormous eyes, jewellike and shimmering, which laid claim to a heritage on the northern plains.

“His father was an American,” Beatrix said, gazing down at the child she held in her arms. “Of the early variety, I’d say.”

Adelaide looked at the sturdy infant and saw no resemblance at all to his blond, diminutive mother. “She said he was handsome and had jet-black hair.”

“Did she say he was a red Indian?”

“No,” Adelaide replied softly.

“Well, he was,” Beatrix said plainly, without censure, “and he would have enjoyed his strong, healthy son.” Turning back to Empress, as pale and motionless as death, Beatrix handed the baby over to Adelaide and withdrew a small bottle from her willow basket, which had been carried in from the carriage. With enormous patience she forced a black liquid down Empress’s throat a spoonful at a time until she was content enough had been swallowed to serve the purpose. “Now she won’t hemorrhage,” Beatrix said with satisfaction, “and baby won’t look out on the world as an orphan.”

When Empress woke several minutes later, Beatrix had already bathed the baby and wrapped him in a snow-white blanket. “I want to hold him,” Empress said, even before she was fully awake.

“How do you know it’s a him?” Adelaide teased, her smile wide with accomplishment. She had actually helped deliver a baby and was exhilarated at her achievement.

What a silly question, Empress thought with an indistinct obscurity that resisted complete and rational thought. “I want to hold him,” she repeated insistently, although her voice was no more than a hushed whisper.

Bringing her new son over, Beatrix laid him beside her.

Empress struggled up on one elbow to look at him, and tears spilled down her cheeks. Her tiny child was looking at her with Trey’s eyes. How could they, she thought with wonder, be so perfectly duplicated? She lightly touched the soft, dark velvet of one downy eyebrow. “I love you,” she whispered, and gathered him into her arms.