Trilby (22 page)

“I could give you a child, if you wanted me to,” he said slowly, and then held his breath waiting for her to reply.

She bit her lower lip. The temptation was shattering. She wanted that, wanted a child of her own to hold, to love. But would it be fair, when she and Thorn barely spoke, when he obviously resented her very presence?

She looked up into watchful dark eyes. “You—you still love Sally,” she said slowly, sadly. “I—I do not want a child born because you used me to substitute for her.”

He caught his breath. She couldn’t believe that! But she could, and did; he saw it in her face. He’d played his part too well.

“Is it that?” he asked. “Or is it because I’m not the Eastern dude?”

She opened her mouth to speak, to tell him the truth. Her eyes softened. But before she could get the words out, Samantha danced into the room with more colored paper, still a little shy around her father but quite at home with Trilby as she sat down beside the woman and began to chatter about decorations.

Thorn sighed heavily and left them there. He wondered for the rest of the day what Trilby might have told him.

“I like red, don’t you, Trilby?” Samantha asked when he was gone, bringing Trilby’s dizzy mind back to the task at hand. She put glue on the paper to make chains while Trilby cut out the pieces for her.

“I like it very much,” Trilby replied. “It’s colorful, like Christmas, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes.” Samantha chewed on her lower lip and finally looked up at Trilby with troubled eyes. “Trilby, do you think Cousin Curt will come on Christmas Day?”

“I’m certain that he and your aunt will come if you want them to.”

“No, I don’t!” the child cried. “I don’t want him to come! I don’t want him here!”

Trilby’s heart seemed to stop in her chest. She laid down the scissors. “But why, darling?”

The child’s huge eyes brightened with tears. “Because she locked me in the pantry.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I saw them kissing. My mama and Cousin Curt,” Samantha said miserably. “They were in the bed and they hadn’t any clothes on. I opened the door and my mama screamed at me and hit me, and then she locked me in the pantry! She made me stay there for a whole hour, Trilby, and there was a rat in the pantry!” The child shivered. “It bit me and I screamed, but she wouldn’t let me out. See, look!” She pulled down her long stocking and showed the scar on her calf. Judging by the size of it, it must have been a bad bite.

“Oh, my dear,” she said softly, and gathered the child into her arms. “My dear, I’m so sorry!”

Samantha wept her heart out. It was nice, for once, to have a grown person listen to her and hold her. She’d had so little affection from the grownups in her life.

“Didn’t you tell your father?” Trilby asked when the tears slackened and she was drying them with her handkerchief.

“She said I mustn’t,” the child explained, with a sniff. “She said she’d do much worse than lock me in the pantry next time, and Cousin Curt was looking at me as if he disliked me very much. He still does. He asked me last time if I said anything to my father. He scares me.” She wiped her eyes again. “I hate having to stay with
Cousin Curt. I don’t like him, and he doesn’t like me, either. He’s forever telling me not to dare tell my father what I saw.”

“You never shall have to stay with him again,” Trilby promised. “Not ever!”

“My father said—”

“Never mind what your father said,” she replied. “I shall speak to him.”

“But you can’t tell him!” Samantha begged. “You can’t! He loved my mommy, Trilby.”

As he doesn’t love me, Trilby thought, but she didn’t say it. She lifted her chin. “Samantha…”

“You mustn’t,” the child persisted. “It’s a secret.”

Trilby’s eyes went to the scar on the child’s leg and she wondered how many other terrible punishments had been endured while Sally pleasured herself with her husband’s cousin. Having experienced Thorn’s mastery in bed, Trilby found it almost unbelievable that Sally could prefer another man.

“We won’t speak of it again, then,” she promised, and smiled. Samantha was too relieved to notice that Trilby hadn’t promised not to tell Thorn.

And she did tell him, graphically, after dinner that night while they spent a few rare minutes alone in the living room. They had separate bedrooms and separate lives. They had so little contact that, despite their marriage, they might be strangers.

“You mustn’t make her stay with him again,” Trilby said quietly. “You do understand that now? She’s really frightened of him, Thorn.”

“I can’t believe it,” he said grimly. “To think that Sally and Curt would both betray me…” he said harshly. “No!”

“I’m sorry that you had to find it out like this,” Trilby said, with quiet anguish, her hands folded primly in her lap. “But Samantha is afraid that you’ll invite your cousin to Christmas dinner and she’s afraid of him. She has a great, terrible scar on her leg from a rat bite she got in the pantry, Thorn.”

“Rat bite!” He looked horrified.

“She screamed and your wife would not let her out,” she said gently. “You never noticed the bite?”

“She showed me a bad cut. Sally said she fell and did it on a piece of tin,” he said stiffly. “I had no idea!”

She felt guilty. He looked tormented, and he did love his child, even if he didn’t show it very much. He’d loved Sally, too. Trilby was jealous of his first wife, but she wouldn’t have told him about Sally unless she’d had to. It was for Samantha’s sake. In a roundabout way, it also exonerated Trilby from the last breath of suspicion—if Thorn had harbored any that she’d ever been involved with Curt. No wonder Sally had lied to Thorn and accused Trilby of being the other woman in Curt’s life!

“I don’t know if anything else was done to Samantha,” Trilby added reluctantly. “Forgive me, but it seems that if your wife was unfeeling enough to punish her by locking her in a pantry with rats—”

“Then she might have done other things,” Thorn added for her. He stared down at the floor. “I’ve been blind.”

“You only loved your wife. I would never have told you except that your daughter is so afraid of Curt.”

“And I’ve left her there so much lately.” He stood up, moving aimlessly around the room. He picked up the tintype of Sally and stared at it. “She was a beautiful
woman. Samantha was never pretty enough to suit her. She hated the child, and me. I knew she was unhappy. But to take it out on her own little girl… It’s heartless!”

“I wish I hadn’t had to tell you,” she said quietly.

“Samantha never said a word.”

“She was afraid you wouldn’t believe her,” Trilby replied.

He grimaced. “Is she afraid of me, too?”

She went close to him, trying to ignore the message her senses were screaming at her. She had an aching impulse to reach up and kiss away his pain. “Thorn, you spend so little time with her,” she said.

“She seems to prefer it that way,” he said stiffly. “She acts as though I’m a stranger to her.”

“But you are,” she emphasized.

“A little girl needs a mother,” he replied implacably. “She and I have nothing to talk about, no common ground.”

Trilby didn’t know how to proceed. He wouldn’t listen. “Curt doesn’t know that Samantha’s said anything,” she said.

“Don’t expect me to keep any secrets, Trilby,” he replied heatedly. “Damn him! He even let me suspect you, instead of telling me the truth. What would it have hurt then? She was dead.”

“You loved her, didn’t you?” she hedged.

“In my way, yes, I did,” he said finally, refusing to elaborate further. His very manner forbade any further discussion. “I’ll talk to Curt. Tell Samantha he won’t be coming here again.”

“You’re fond of him.”

“No man who is a man plays around with someone else’s wife.” His voice was icy cold. “If it—it matters,”
he added hesitantly, “I’m sorry for the way I treated you. Sally told me— Well, you know what she told me. Obviously she was only trying to protect herself.”

“I decided that for myself.” She searched his hard face, sad for him now. “Sometimes women do crazy things, Thorn,” she said. “It wouldn’t mean that Sally didn’t love you. Maybe she was looking for excitement.”

“At the risk of losing her child, her husband, her reputation?” He laughed curtly. “I seem to have been living in a dreamworld. Are people ever what they seem?”

“I don’t suppose they are,” she said sadly, thinking of Richard and how madly she’d loved him, only to find him with feet of clay. She looked up at him. “Will you get me a tree?”

He didn’t reply for a moment. Those soft gray eyes made his knees go weak. He loved the exquisite tenderness in them, the way her long lashes curled up from them. He found himself smiling wistfully. “What kind do you want?” he asked softly.

She tingled all over from the way he was looking at her. “Not a paloverde,” she whispered.

“All right.” He bent and brushed his mouth, very gently, against her forehead. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of Curt.”

He’d gone before she could tell him what kind of tree she wanted. He came back with a straggly piñon pine. It was a scruffy little thing, although the homemade decorations Trilby and Samantha put on it helped its homeliness.

T
RILBY BAKED AND
Samantha decorated confections and cakes. By Christmas Day, they had a delightful array
of baked goods to give to the employees’ families, as well as some to eat for themselves.

At the table, they all dressed in their Sunday best and Thorn carved the delicately browned turkey Trilby had made.

“Isn’t it lovely, Father?” Samantha asked shyly. “I helped.”

“You certainly did,” Trilby agreed, smiling at her. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

Thorn glanced at his daughter. She openly adored Trilby, who was gentle and kind and warm with her. All the things, in fact, that she wasn’t with him. She’d avoided him since she’d made her soft confession. He wondered sometimes if he’d dreamed the two nights they’d had together.

It wouldn’t do to look back, he told himself. She was missing her Richard, and he was trying to work himself into the grave to keep from going to her one dark night. It was difficult to keep his head.

He hadn’t kept it with Curt. He’d found the man at home and knocked him down, to his wife’s astonishment. He hadn’t explained, hadn’t said a word. But Curt knew; it was in his eyes. He hadn’t retaliated. Thorn had left him lying on the floor without a word, and Curt didn’t have to be told that his favorite relation would no longer welcome him at Los Santos.

But the hardest thing of all was coming face-to-face with what a fool he’d been. He’d never suspected Sally of infidelity, and all the time she’d been pushing him out of her bed, she’d been pulling Curt into it. The knowledge did something terrible to his ego, to his self-confidence. In the beginning, Sally had cared for him, as he had for her. Now he wondered if he could ever trust his
own judgment again. Samantha had paid a high price for his blindness. He wondered if she ever blamed him for the pain she’d endured at her mother’s hands. He wished he could ask her.

“Father, you’re not eating,” Samantha said shyly.

“What? No, I suppose I’m not.” He tasted his turkey and smiled at Samantha. “It’s very good.”

“Thank you,” Trilby murmured shyly.

He didn’t reply. After they finished eating, he leaned back and rolled and lit a cigarette. “McCollum may come a little sooner than expected to do some digging,” he said.

“Your archaeologist friend?” Trilby asked carefully.

“Yes. He’ll be bringing a few students with him. They can stay in the bunkhouse.”

“Is Sissy coming with the group?” Trilby asked. “She hasn’t mentioned it in her letters, and she won’t actually be in his class until January. Will he let her come anyway?”

“I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.” He stared at her. “You liked him, didn’t you?” he added, with a cold laugh. “He’s civilized.”

He got to his feet and smiled at Samantha on his way out.

Trilby looked up at him, but he didn’t meet her eyes. He’d been a fool once already. He wasn’t risking his heart again, not when she was sitting there pining for that damned blond fellow back East.

T
HEY OPENED THEIR
presents that evening. Trilby had made a lacy, ruffled yellow dress for Samantha, who adored it. For Thorn, there was a silk tie in a subdued blue paisley that she’d made by hand.

He, in turn, gave his daughter a new store-bought doll with blond hair, a china tea set, and a tiddleywinks game. He presented Trilby with a music box. That night they sat in the living room with the candles lit on the Christmas tree and were serenaded by several guitar-playing Mexican cowboys.

It was almost idyllic, except that Trilby missed her own family, where Christmas had been such a happy and boisterous affair with the extended family gathered all around back in New Orleans. By comparison, this was a sad and lonely affair. She telephoned her parents that night and it brightened her smile when they said they’d be over the next day to see them. At least it wouldn’t be quite so lonely then.

Trilby wished them good-night at bedtime and carried the little music box to her room. It was round and made of wood, with a beautiful green and gold pattern on it. Inside it was a place to keep loose powder. She turned the key and listened with rapt delight to the Viennese waltz it played.

A rough knock at the door made her turn. Thorn came stiffly into the room, pausing just inside the door.

“I wanted to thank you for making Christmas so enjoyable for Samantha,” he told her. “She hadn’t had much in the way of attention for some time. She enjoyed tonight.”

“So did I,” she said quietly.

He had, too, but he couldn’t admit that without giving away feelings he didn’t want to admit he had. “I’ll be away for a few days,” he stated abruptly. “It’s unavoidable. I have to go down into Mexico and make some arrangements about my holdings there. It’s getting too dangerous to try to hold on to the hacienda.”

“My parents and Teddy are coming over tomorrow,” she said slowly. “You…won’t stay just until then?”

“There’s no point,” he said curtly, thinking how difficult it would be to see Trilby laugh and smile with her people when she resembled a prisoner in his house.