Trilby (2 page)

“Am I being offered a slice of it?” he drawled instead.

She almost panicked. Teddy answered for her, his young voice excited. “Surely!” he said enthusiastically. “Trilby bakes the best pie, Mr. Vance! I like it with cream, but our cow’s gone dry just lately and we’ve had to do without.”

“Your father didn’t mention the cow,” Vance said as he swung lithely out of the saddle and tied the reins to the porch post. He came up onto the porch with a bound, his long, lithe body as graceful out of the saddle as in it. He towered over Teddy and Trilby, too tall and forceful.

She turned quickly and went back into the house. At least her blond hair was up in its neat braid, not loose and uninhibited as she usually wore it around the house. She looked much more cool and collected than she felt. She wished she had some red cayenne pepper; she’d fill Mr. Vance’s pie full of it. He probably thrived on hot peppers and arsenic, she thought wickedly.

“We got another cow yesterday, from Mr. Barnes down the road,” Teddy volunteered. “But sis got busy baking and hasn’t milked her. I’ll go and do it for you, Trilby, while you check the pie. It will only take a little while.”

She tried to protest, but Teddy had grabbed the tin milking pail and rushed out the back door before she could stop him. She was left alone, and frightened, with the hostile Mr. Vance.

He wasn’t bothering to camouflage his hostility now, either, with Teddy out of the way. He pulled a Bull Durham pouch out of his pocket, along with a small folder
of tissue papers, and proceeded to roll a cigarette with quick, deft movements of his long-fingered hands.

Trilby busied herself checking inside the wood stove to see if her pie was finished. Back home, there had been a gas stove. Trilby had been secretly afraid of it, but she sometimes missed it now that she had to cook on the wood-burning one, the best they could afford. Stocking the ranch had been expensive. Keeping it going was getting harder by the day. Teddy should never have mentioned the cow going dry.

She saw the brown crust even as she smelled the mingled cinnamon and sugar and butter smell of baking apples. Just right. She took her cloths and got it quickly out of the oven and onto the long cooking table that ran almost from wall to wall. Her hands shook, but thank heaven, she didn’t drop the pie.

“Do I make you nervous, Miss Lang?” he asked, pulling up a chair. He straddled it, his powerful body coiled like a snake’s as he folded it down onto the chair and rested his forearms over its back. He looked very masculine, and the very set of his muscular body, with the chaps and jeans drawn tight over long, powerful legs, made Trilby feel awkward and shy. She’d never noticed Richard’s legs at all. Her sudden interest in Thorn’s unsettled her, made her defensive.

“Oh, no, Mr. Vance,” she replied, with a vacant smile. “I find hostility
so
invigorating.”

His eyebrows lifted and he had to stifle a smile. “Do you? Yet, your hands shake.”

“I have little experience of men…except for my father and brother. Perhaps I’m ill at ease.”

He watched her push back a wisp of blond hair with eyes that held nothing but contempt. “I thought you
found my cousin quite irresistible at that social gathering last month.”

“Curt?” She nodded, missing the look that flared in his dark eyes. “I like him very much. He has a pleasant manner and a nice smile. He gave Teddy a peppermint stick.” She smiled at the memory. “My brother never forgets a kindness.” She glanced at him warily. “Your cousin reminds me of someone back home. He’s a kind man. And a gentleman,” she added pointedly, her eyes making her opinion of his garb, and himself, perfectly plain without a word being spoken.

He wanted to laugh out loud. Sally had told him about seeing Curt and Miss Lang here in a passionate embrace. She wasn’t the first to mention the relationship, either. A lady from the church—a notorious gossip—had mentioned seeing Curt and a blond woman in an embrace at a gathering. He’d taken the gossip home to Sally, who’d told him about Trilby. She’d done it quickly, but almost reluctantly, too. Thorn remembered that she’d gone quite pale at the time.

The revelation had left him with a fine contempt for Trilby. His cousin Curt was a married man, but Miss Lang didn’t seem to mind shattering convention. Funny, a woman who acted as ladylike as she did, behaving like that. But then, he knew too well what deceivers women were. Sally had pretended to love him, when she’d only wanted a life of wealth and comfort.

“Curt’s wife also admires him,” he said pointedly.

When she didn’t react, he sighed roughly and took a long draw from the cigarette, his eyes never leaving hers. “The wrong type of woman can ruin a good man and his life.”

“I have found very few good men out here,” she
said flatly. She busied herself slicing the pie. Her hands shook and she hated the fact that he watched them, his smile mocking and unkind.

“You don’t seem to find the desert too hot, Miss Lang. Most Easterners detest it.”

“I’m a Southerner, Mr. Vance,” she reminded him. “Louisiana is hot in the summer.”

“Arizona is hot year-round. But you won’t find an overabundance of mosquitoes. We don’t have swamps here.”

She glared at him. “The yellow dust makes up for it.”

“Does it, truly?” he asked, mocking that very correct Southern accent that brought to mind cotillions and masked balls and mansions.

She wiped her hands and put the knife aside. She wouldn’t throw it at him, she wouldn’t!

“I suppose so.” She went to get the dishes for the pie from the china cabinet, praying silently that she wouldn’t drop any of them. “Do you care for iced tea, Mr. Vance?” And if I only had some hemlock…

“Yes, thank you.”

She opened the small icebox and with an ice pick chipped off several pieces of ice to go in the tall plain glasses. She covered the small block of ice with its cloth again and closed the door. “Ice is wonderful in this heat. I wish I had a houseful of it.”

He didn’t reply. She took the ceramic jug of tea she’d made for dinner and poured some of the sweetened amber liquid into the glasses. She’d fixed three, because surely Teddy would be back soon. She’d skin him if he wasn’t! Her nerves were strung like barbed wire.

She put a perfect slice of pie on a saucer and placed
it before him at the table with one of the old silver forks her grandmother had given them before they’d left Baton Rouge. She placed a linen napkin with it and put the glass of tea on it. The ice shook and made a noise like tiny bells against the glass.

His lean hand shot out as she withdrew hers and caught her small wrist in a hot, strong grasp. She caught her breath audibly and stared at him with wide, wary eyes.

He scowled faintly at her reaction. His gaze went to her hand as he turned it in his and rubbed the soft palm gently with his big callused thumb. “Red and worn, but a lady’s hand, just the same. Why did you come out here with your family, Trilby?”

The unfamiliar sound of her name on his lips, in that deep, soft tone, made her knees weak. She stared at his work-toughened hand, at the darkness of his skin against the paleness of her fingers. His touch excited her.

“I had nowhere else to go. Besides, Mama needed me. She isn’t that well.”

“A fragile woman, your mother. A real Southern lady. Just like you,” he added contemptuously.

She lifted her eyes to his. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t you know?” he replied coldly, and the dark eyes that met hers were full of distaste. “You won’t find much polite society out West, my girl. It’s a hard life, and we’re hard people. When you live on the fringe of the desert, you get tough or you get dead. A little bit of fluff like you won’t last long. If the political situation here gets much worse, you’ll wish you’d never left Louisiana.”

“I’m hardly a bit of fluff,” she said angrily, thinking
that his late wife fit that description far more than she did, although she was too polite to say it. “Why do you dislike me so?”

He grew more somber as he looked at her. He wanted to throw his contempt in her face, but he didn’t speak. A minute later, Teddy came in the back door with half a pail of milk, and Thornton Vance slowly released Trilby’s hand. She rubbed it instinctively, thinking that she’d surely have a bruise on the back of it by morning. She had delicate, thin skin, and his grip hadn’t been gentle.

“Here’s the milk. Did you cut me a slice of that pie, Trilby?”

“Yes, Teddy. Sit down and I’ll get it.”

Teddy pretended not to notice Trilby’s unease, putting it down to the presence of Mr. Vance….

“There, wasn’t that good?” Teddy asked the visitor when they’d finished the delicious pie. Thorn had wolfed his down with delight.

“Not bad,” Thorn agreed. His dark eyes narrowed on Trilby’s pale face. “I think your sister finds me hard going, Ted.”

“Not at all,” Trilby said, denying it. “One learns to take headaches in one’s stride.” She got up abruptly and gathered the dishes, taking them quickly to the sink with the iron pump attached. She pumped it to get water into a pan and then poured water into the kettle and set it on the wood stove to boil.

“The stove sure does make it uncomfortable in the summer, doesn’t it, Mr. Vance?” Teddy asked.

Thorn had smothered a grin at Trilby’s last riposte. “You get used to things when you have to, Ted,” Thorn said.

Trilby felt a twinge of sympathy for him. He’d lost his wife, and he had probably cared about her a great deal. He couldn’t help being rough and uncivilized. He hadn’t had the advantages of an Eastern man.

“That was good pie,” Thorn said directly, and sounded surprised.

“Thank you,” she said. “Grandmother taught me how to cook when I was just a little girl.”

“You’re not a little girl now, are you?” Vance asked curtly.

“That’s right,” Teddy agreed, not realizing that the question was more mockery than query. “Trilby’s old. She’s twenty-four.”

Trilby could have gone right through the floor. “Ted!”

Thorn stared at her for a long moment. “I thought you were much younger.”

She flushed. “How you do go on, Mr. Vance,” she said stiffly. “Speaking of going on…”

Vance smiled at her. It changed his face, made it less formidable, charming as his black eyes sparkled. “Yes?” he prodded.

“How old are you, Mr. Vance?” Teddy interrupted.

“I’m thirty-two,” he told the boy. “I suppose that puts me in the class with your grandparents?”

Teddy laughed. “Right into the rocking chair.”

Vance laughed, too. He got up from the table and pulled his pocket watch out of the slit above the pocket of his jeans. He opened it and grimaced. “I’ve got an Eastern visitor arriving on the train this afternoon. I must go.”

“Come again,” Teddy invited.

“I will, when your father’s home.” He glanced at
Trilby speculatively. “I’m having a party Friday evening, a get-together for my Eastern visitor. He was a relation of my wife’s, and he’s somewhat famous in academic circles. He’s an anthropologist. I’d like you all to come.”

“Me, too?” Teddy asked excitedly.

Vance nodded. “There’ll be other youngsters around. And Curt will be there, with his wife,” he added, with a pointed glance at Trilby.

Trilby didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t attended an evening party since they’d been in Arizona, although they’d been invited to several. Her mother didn’t like social gatherings. She might agree to this one, because it wouldn’t do to offend someone as wealthy and powerful as Thornton Vance, even if he did look and act like some sort of desperado.

“I’ll mention it to Mama and Papa,” she told him.

“You do that.” He took his hat in hand and walked with easy strides to the front door with Trilby and Teddy behind him.

It was tilted at the usual rakish angle when he swung lazily into the saddle. “Thanks for the pie,” he told Trilby.

She tilted her chin at just the right angle and smiled at him coldly. “Oh, it was no trouble at all. I’m sorry I couldn’t offer you some cream with it.”

“Had you lapped it up already?” he tormented.

She glared at him. “No. I expect you curdled it.”

He chuckled with reluctant pleasure. He tipped his hat, wheeled the horse gently, and eased him into a nice trot. Trilby and Teddy watched him until he was out of sight.

“He likes you,” he teased her.

She lifted an eyebrow. “I’m not at all the kind of woman he’d be interested in.”

“Why not?”

She glared at Thorn’s back with mingled excitement and resentment. “I expect he likes his women with their necks on the ground under his boot.”

“Oh, Trilby, you’re silly! Do you like Mr. Vance?” he persisted.

“No, I do not,” she said tersely, and turned back into the house. “I have a lot of things to do, Teddy.”

“If that’s a hint, sis, I’ll go find something to do myself. But I still say Mr. Vance is sweet on you!”

He ran off, down the long porch. Trilby stood with the screen door open watching after him, worried. She didn’t think Mr. Vance was sweet on her. She thought he was up to something, and she didn’t know what. But she was worried.

When her mother and father came home, Teddy related Mr. Vance’s visit to them, and they smiled in that same knowing way. Trilby flushed like a beet.

“He isn’t interested in me, I tell you. He wanted to see the both of you,” she told her parents.

“Why?” her father asked.

“He’s having a party Friday night,” Teddy said excitedly. “He said we’re all invited, and I can come, too. Can’t we go? It’s been ever so long since we’ve been to a party.” He glowered at them. “And you won’t let me go to see Mr. Cody’s show Thursday afternoon. They said it will be his very last show—and he’s got Pawnee Bill’s Far East Show on the same bill, with real elephants!”

“I’m sorry, Teddy,” his father said, “but we really can’t spare the time, I’m afraid. We’re shipping cattle
to California this week, and we’re still behind some of the other cattle companies getting ours en route.”

“Buffalo Bill’s last show and I’ll miss it,” Teddy groaned.

“Perhaps he isn’t really retiring. Besides,” Mary Lang said gently, “there’s sure to be one of those new Boy Scout troops starting up soon in Douglas, what with all the publicity the movement is getting. You could join that, perhaps.”